Page 33 of My Cruel Billionaire

“Jenna is correct.” Michael’s voice contained none of its usual aggression or smugness, and yet he still defied anyone to argue with him by sheer presence alone. He was ostensibly speaking to the entire boardroom, yet his blue eyes remained locked on me.

“It’s time for us to look forward, instead of dwelling on the past.”

I did my best not to flinch, or give any sign of the shiver that ran down my spine. All of a sudden I felt a shock traveling through my body. Was Michael just talking about this case? Or was he talking about us?

Did he regret what happened between us? He’d said that maybe he shouldn’t have fired me. Michael admitting a mistake was one of those once-in-a-lifetime things. Even if he did make one, he wasn’t likely to admit it. You might even say that Michael was as likely to admit to a mistake as a snowball was to form on the sun.

I couldn’t help myself. He impressed me.

Only now I had to say something that was going to make the whole room a lot less comfortable. Comfortable? Hah. It had been as comfortable as a bed of nails from the start and now it was about to get worse. Much worse.

I cast my gaze over the three members of Michael’s team. Chad returned my gaze with something like a challenge, as if daring me to say something to him so he could retort and assert dominance. Trent kind of half smiled like maybe he thought he was going to ask me to drinks after the meeting, and Blake tried to imitate everything Michael did, as always.

None of them took me seriously for my business acumen. None of them considered me a threat. I figured that would be an advantage.

“This theft proves that the individual or individuals trying to sabotage the merger between NonPoint and Leisure Unlimited is on your team. My team is, simply put, blameless.”

Silence reigned for a long moment. Then Chad laughed mockingly and looked over at Michael.

“Are you listening to this?” he turned a glare my way. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how you can level an accusation like that at us. Given the stock options involved, the three of us stand to make a small fortune in the merger just for being in this boardroom. Why would we risk that by trying to sabotage it?”

“I’m not at a stage where I can speculate on motivation,” I said coolly, returning his gaze without wavering. He only thought he was like Michael Wallace. Hah. He wanted to be like Michael Wallace. But he was so far off the mark he might as well have been trying to be Michael Myers.

“I can say that there had to be opportunity for this theft.” I gestured at my team members. “None of my team members had access to this building. They get in for our meetings because we gather in the parking garage and use my security pass.”

“Well,youstill have access,” Blake said in a ‘gotcha’ tone of voice.

“Yes, but the theft had to occur in a particular time period, when no one was on this floor. During that particular stretch of time, my movements were all accounted for. In short, I have a digital alibi in the form of my phone. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Michael, so that leaves the three other people in this room with security access to this building.”

Michael cleared his throat, and his three team members all turned their whiter-than-sour-cream faces toward him as if he were their savior. I think they believed he was about to put me in my place.

“I was wrong,” Michael said.

The three members of his team deflated like balloons on a porcupine farm. Their savior had just floored them by taking accountability.

They weren’t the only ones floored, either. Michael never took accountability for anything, and yet here he was doing just that twice in one day. Twice in one hour.

Maybe Satan was ice skating to work because hell had truly frozen over.

“I’m not convinced the saboteur is in this room,” he said. "But she’s right. Her team is definitely not behind this and neither is she. It has to be someone on my payroll. And everyone is a suspect.”

The three of them shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

“Now,” I said, clearing my throat, "that we have, once again, dealt with this matter to the best of our ability at this juncture, let’s return our attention to what we can do to rectify it. Namely, my team needs to look through the documents that Evan provided and then ‘fill in the holes’ as it were.”

“How long do you expect that to take?”

“I think that between the four of us we can have it sometime later this evening, tomorrow morning at the latest.” I looked over at my team. “Anybody object to an all-nighter if need be?”

Joestar grinned.

“I kind of miss all-nighters. The bad take-out food, the endless pots of coffee, the slap-happy discussions of Samuel L. Jackson films. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“All right. It sounds to me like we have a plan of action. Let’s adjourn this meeting for now, and pick up once we’ve all received the report.”

Everyone packed up their things and headed for the door, me included. I told Joestar he was in charge of the meeting until I arrived. I needed to figure out what to do with my kid so I could make this work. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d worked on a project with Damon asleep in my lap.

As I headed for the door, Michael spoke.

---