Page 91 of Corrupt Game

I’d told Andrew not to go over there, and he hadn’t listened to me. Now, he was dead and it was all my fault. None of this would have happened if he’d done as I asked.

I needed to control those I loved. If I didn’t, I lost them.

The chopper landed, and I raced over to the plane as the pilot began to get things ready for takeoff.

“Here, sir. They sent this over from the office for you to look at during your flight.” The flight attendant stated.

Distracted, I buckled my seat belt, already missing Collette.

As usual, Kathy had settled on the opposite end of the plane from me and was already working. She was a treasure when it came to emergencies like this; she was willing to take on any and all challenges.

Rossi’s cautions had made me hesitate and then my loss of control had sealed the decision. I wanted to share this part of my life with her, but I needed to be on firm ground before I did so.

While she was the one person that would have understood the choices I’d made, she was still a loose cannon.

I didn’t know her in her entirety.

Takeoff was a breeze, and I opened the manila envelope as the plane leveled off.

Pictures of Andrew fell to the floor as the contents slid free.

“What the hell?” I bent over and picked them up.

Some were taken from strange angles while others seemed to have been cut. Someone didn’t want me to see the entire photo or who Andrew had been meeting in Ireland.

There was more going on than I’d assumed in the beginning when Andrew had come to me with his personal problem. He’d fallen in love with the daughter of an Irish Mafia boss.

It spiraled into disaster quickly, Andrew’s entanglement combining with the Irish Mafia moving in to try to steal my developing product and sell the prototypes.

Then Andrew was murdered.

He was my best friend, and I was going to ensure that his killers never saw the light of day.

Given he’d had a bodyguard and had been working on trying to find the leak the Mafia was exploiting, there was a mole in the company. Someone didn’t like what I was paying them.

And my friend had died for it.

Pride was involved too. Nothing would be allowed to stop my tech from hitting the market.

This had become deeply personal, and I was going to make sure that whoever was trying to undermine me regretted it before they ceased to exist.

***

The plane touched down briefly to refuel before taking off for Belfast.

I’d spent the first half of the flight working on an angle to find the person that was betraying me.

Rossi had been updated and began to search through all the financials of my employees. If there was a trail, he would find it.

My thoughts turned back to Collette.

He had warned me about her. Could he be right that she was trying to play me?

I shook my head in disbelief.

There hadn’t been anything in her background that would link her to this fucked up situation. She had no money and no connections that we could find.

Maybe she’d just been opportunistic and used the situation to make a vertical jump up the corporate ladder.