Page 6 of His Captor

Case in point, Colin had nothing to do with the actual development of my security system. He was a glorified office manager. We’d gone to grad school together, but after graduating, he’d put his focus into idea after idea that didn’t pan out. When that proved to be too frustrating for him, he glommed onto my ideas, which actually worked, instead. He called it focusing on marketing instead of R&D.

And yet, he still thought we were a fifty-fifty partnership.

I would have and, arguably, should have ended our partnership and gone into business with myself, or with my friend, Alex. The hitch was that, despite his questionable taste in clients, Colin was way better at finding the funding for the expensive projects I was working on than I was. That and Colin had a beta wife and three kids under the age of five to take care of. I didn’t want to leave them high and dry.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, uncrossing my arms and loosening up my posture. “I won’t say no to Victory Holdings outright, even though I have serious doubts about them.” Serious doubts that included a question about whether they were working with terrorists and whether my security innovations would protectcriminals instead of keeping innocent people safe. “We need to follow some of the other leads, though.”

“Leads? What leads?” Colin huffed. “No other offers come close to what Victory is offering.”

“What about Jonas Enterprises?” I asked. “What about the potential government contract?”

Colin snorted. “The government pays shit,” he said. “And Jonas Enterprises are nothing but a bunch of do-gooders vegetarians who think we should protect the planet at the expense of the people who actually live on it.”

Jonas Enterprises was an umbrella corporation with a mission to leave the planet better than we found it. They supported environmental causes, were developing alternative fuels, and were interested in my security tech as a way to make smaller companies doing the same in unstable nations and locations safe from local gangs who wanted to shut them down.

But no, they didn’t have the funding to pay what the shady people of the world could pay.

I didn’t care about the money, I cared about the principle of the thing.

Colin knew that.

“Don’t make me pull up the agreement,” he said with a scowl.

I sucked in a breath. And that was the other reason I hadn’t walked away and taken my toys with me years ago. When Colin and I had first graduated and started the company as wide-eyed, idealistic twenty-somethings, we’d formalized an agreement that we would always work as a team, splitting not only the profits, but any decisions made on the company’s behalf fifty-fifty. Back then, when I was green and stupid. I’d signed a document that basically said Colin had a fifty percent share of my intellectual property.

I needed to get a lawyer to look at that old agreement. Soon.

“None of this needs any sort of a decision right away,” I said, pushing my chair back and standing. I carefully picked my laptop up as I did. “I have a couple things to do with the rest of this afternoon, and then I’ll be away for the weekend.”

“Away for the weekend?” Colin asked incredulously, eyeing my laptop like it was a slice of chocolate cake he wanted. “You can’t go away for the weekend. We have that outing with the investors from Victory to go to.”

“Reschedule it,” I said, heading for my office door. “Something has come up and I’m needed elsewhere.”

“You can’t reschedule with people like that,” Colin said in a tight voice as we reached the hall.

I stopped and turned to him. “I don’t want to do business withpeople like that, end of story.” I walked on. “Cancel the meeting entirely. I haven’t liked the feel of Victory Holdings from day one, and I like them even less now.”

“But—”

“Cancel the meeting,” I said firmly.

“It’s not a meeting,” Colin called after me as I reached the elevator. “It’s a party. We were invited to a party. I’ve already told them you were coming.”

I stared firmly at him as I got into the elevator, holding his gaze. “I’ll think about it,” I said as the doors slid shut.

Once I was alone as the elevator swooshed down, I blew out a breath. I hadn’t handled that as well as I could have. Half a dozen of our employees had seen the whole exchange from their cubicles. Who knew what Colin was saying to them now?

It didn’t matter, though. I had other options, and I definitely had other things to think about.

A feisty little omega named Billy who wanted very bad things done to him, for example.

By the time I made it to the parking garage and my car, I was smiling again. Already, plans and ideas were forming inmy head. I’d certainly never had trouble coming up with ideas, whether that was for security tech or kinky scenes to play out with masochistic omegas.

My play apartment wasn’t just set up with high-end security cameras and locking mechanism for the doors. I had motion-activated containment units set up in various spots around the doors and windows, and a few other, highly experimental things involving mild electric shocks and other things that would subdue ordinary people, and leave kinksters dripping with arousal.

But a lot of pieces needed to be put into place before I could tackle any of that.

As soon as I was in my car with my laptop tucked safely on the passenger’s seat beside me, I plugged in my phone and dialed Alex.

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