Chapter Twenty-Three
Pounding on his front door pulled Liam out of the video game stupor he tried to lose himself in after work. He wanted to ignore the knock at the door, but Flynn and his excited barking wouldn’t let him. Besides, there were only a handful of people who would come over this late at night. Sighing, he paused the game and went to open the door.
Eli, Greer, and Sophia stood on the other side. Greer clutched her laptop against her Wonder Woman T-shirt, Flynn dancing around the legs of her ratty jeans. More surprising, Eli and Sophia were just as casual.
“What are you guys doing here?” Liam asked, stepping aside from them to come in.
“Nice to see you, too,” Greer snarked, bending down to scratch Flynn’s ears. Eli did the same. A look passed between them when their hands brushed each other in the dog’s fur. Okay, something weird was going on. Mr. Professional never let his hair down around one of the Monroes, and he definitely didn’t look at Greer like she was his next meal.
Sophia caught his gaze and shrugged. “What Greer means to say is sorry to bother you so late, but we think we’ve finally cracked Barton’s master plan.”
“Well that’s a horse of a different color,” he said, leading the way to the living room. “Can I get y’all something to drink?”
“I’ll get the beers,” Greer offered, handing the computer off to Eli. “You guys get started on possible shitstorm.”
Worry began to creep in, but he took a seat on an easy chair across from Eli and Sophia. Flynn jumped up beside him, begging to be scratched. “Back, Flynn. You’ve had your run and your quota of scratches for the day. So, what’d you find?”
“Eli’s network security consultants found some spreadsheets you might want to take a look at. Looks like they were deleted from the computer in the CEO’s office, but they were still in the server under Vivien’s email,” Sophia said. “I turned them into some forensic accountants in my department to verify.”
Eli booted the computer up and pushed it across the coffee table. “It’s a whole can of worms from the looks of it.”
Accepting the green beer bottle from Greer, Liam studied the spreadsheet on the screen. Numbers weren’t his strong suit, but he could see enough to know there was a problem. “How much did your guys find missing, Soph?”
“That, my friend, is where things get interesting.” Greer came over and clicked to a Word document before taking a seat and pulling out her tablet. Liam scanned it, discerning that this was the summary from the external auditor Vivien was supposed to meet with.
“Fifteen million dollars? How did no one catch this before? And where did it all go?”
Sophia took a long drag on her beer. “Barton’s smart. Not only does he have final call on the budget; he’s the only one who ever reviews the books for every single department and, of course, he kept two sets of them. He took bits here and there from places no one would look for. From what the accountant said, it goes back at least a year, probably longer. But the copycat games started popping up around the same time he started getting transfers from a shell account my guys haven’t been able to trace yet.”
“Conveniently, a year ago is also when Dad’s latest will was written and witnessed by guess who.” Greer sat next to Eli, barely an inch between them.
“Your uncle witnessed Jed’s will?”
“It made sense, I supposed, considering he was the longest serving employee besides Jed.” Eli let Flynn hop up beside him, scratching the dog’s ears. “Plus, the company was built with his sister’s money.”
“Fuck. I knew my sister was stupid, but I never knew she had a masochistic streak.”
Everyone turned to Greer, Liam’s stomach dropping to his toes. What had Viv got herself into now?
“What’d you find?” Eli asked.
“I was looking through a few of the files Sophia’s guys sent over. Check it out.” Greer held out the tablet.
Eli’s finger trailed over the screen. “Jesus. These were on your uncle’s computer?”
Curling up farther into herself, Greer nodded.
“Okay, ew. Didn’t need to see that much of Liam. But who is that other guy with Viv? And why does my uncle have pictures of them together?”
“Pictures? What pictures?” Liam asked, grabbing for the tablet.
Sophia got to it first. “Christopher Hawkins. Tycoon of the moment.”
“What does it matter who my sister’s dating? She’s single and legal. Why spy on her like she was doing something trashy?”
Liam bit back a curse. He didn’t want to have to tell Greer this about her sister. It should come from Vivien in a moment of sisterly bonding, not because their scummy uncle dug it up to hold against Vivien. But this explained a whole hell of a lot.
“Well, I guess that all depends on who you ask.”
“What do you mean?” Greer’s brow furrowed behind the rim of her glasses.
Liam took the tablet from Sophia. “I mean that Hawkins is a married man, and he’s a major client of Vivien’s firm.”
While he let her stew on that, Liam looked through the pictures, bile almost choking him along with the wave of violation, both of his privacy and Viv’s.
Greer finally connected the dots. “Shit. Would he seriously hang his own niece out to dry like that? Put her smack-dab in the firing line of every asshole out there by saying she slept her way to the top?”
“Without batting an eye. Your uncle’s a selfish bastard through and through. He doesn’t see your sister as his niece. She’s just another pawn in his game.” Eli shook his head. “He knew the terms of Jed’s will for a while now. Why do you think he had your sister followed for the last year?”
“Year?”
Sophia nodded. “Your sister started dating Hawkins about nine months before she came here. Broke up with him a month or so before Jed died. So, to get these pictures, your uncle had to follow her at least that long.”
“Wait—you all knew about her relationship with this guy?”
“Viv told me,” Liam said, his eyes still glued on the screen.
“I’m assuming Eli found out the same way I did,” Sophia said. “It’s not hard to figure out if you have the right resources.”
“When were these taken?” Liam redirected the conversation back to the more pressing issues at hand.
“The most recent are the ones in your kitchen,” Eli said.
Liam’s temper almost boiled over. He desperately wanted to punch something. “Is this why she left?”
Sophia hesitated. “We don’t know for sure, but if you want my educated guess, Richard decided to use them to blackmail her into giving up the company.”
“So she did it to save her own skin?” Sounds like her, he thought. Or the old her at least.
Eli gave him a chastising look. “Like she said, we don’t know for sure what happened. Only Vivien and Barton do.”
And she wasn’t here to tell them. “Did you find anything that definitively ties Barton to the break-in?”
“My computer forensics guys are good, and we’ve been between major cases.” Sophia settled back on the couch, gently pushing Flynn away. “They found security data that someone tried to erase from the company’s server, containing both corporate security information and game development specs. The security on the doors wasn’t in place yet, but the gates were up and working on the day of the break-in. We found the badge codes used to enter that night. Right after you got there, Greer, your uncle’s badge was used to get past the security gates. Footage from the guardhouse was also erased, but it showed that your uncle was driving a nondescript black car with an unidentified male in the front seat.”
Liam pulled his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Why didn’t the police find any of this? Why did it take so long for you guys to find it?”
“Because my uncle is a slimy bastard. That’s why he drove the guy there. He did all the cleanup work and knew how to bypass the old systems. Since we were in the middle of transitioning, it wasn’t easy to find the info, but Sophia’s white hats are the best.”
Liam tried to wrap his tired brain around all of this. So, they were right about Barton. More right than even he expected. But how did they fix this mess?
“Right before I left today, I got an email from the head of PR. Apparently, Barton wants to announce an IPO as early as the day after tomorrow. Once he gets that ball rolling, it’ll be hard for us to stop him.”
“How can he put an IPO together so fast?” Greer asked. “He’s only had control for two weeks.”
“He’s been working on it for months. That’s why he was so desperate for Viv to make a decision,” Liam said. “John in legal sent me the documents. He’s already got an underwriter and everything. From the date stamps, it looks like the timeline matches up with how long he’s been spying on Viv. He wanted to have any ammo he could in case this happened. He knew about Jed’s will. Even if Jed hadn’t died, he’d have done anything to protect Viv and her career.”
Greer crossed her arms, dropping her head back against the back of the couch. “So how do we stop this? And what do we do if we succeed? I mean, it’s not like any of us could step in to take over.”
“We’ve got enough here to put together a good case for embezzlement, corporate espionage, and maybe enough to throw a RICO case together,” Sophia said. “But this’ll take time. We’ll need someone in a senior position at the company to be the one to work with us, give us all of this information. With the change in power, things get a little dicey.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, the air heavy with tension as they tried to come up with a plan. Suddenly, Flynn jumped off the couch, barking like crazy right before the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it.”
Liam got to his feet, wondering who it could be. His mom would come in the back door, and she was usually in bed long before ten. “Quiet down, Flynn. You’d think we never got visitors the way you’re carrying on.”
Opening the door, Liam froze. He was pretty sure his heart stopped, too. No, he must have fallen asleep while he was thinking. Yeah, that would explain it. Only a dream could look as good to him as she did in her jeans and T-shirt. Or the lack of sleep was starting to catch up with him and he was seeing things.
Delusional from sleep deprivation. That explained it.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in New York, in her fancy apartment, working herself into an early grave at the job she couldn’t walk away from. He didn’t know what to feel in that moment. Old Liam wanted to shut the door in her face for abandoning them the way she did. New Liam wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless, because the woman he loved was here.
“Hi,” she said, her voice soft and uncertain.
Instinct told him to swoop her up, kiss her, and then drag her up to his room and lock her in there forever. But he couldn’t do that.
Not yet.
“What are you doing here, Viv?”