Page 16 of Played
I run my tongue over my front teeth. Am I? “I’ll look into it, but I want to get some more details from you to make sure they match up with what’s in the report.”
His entire body seems to sag with relief. “Thank you, Mr. Blackthorn.”
“Call me King.”
Chapter
Seven
MASON
Iread the headline again and scowl. “I can’t believe this shit! Once is a coincidence, twice is fucking sabotage. Somebody gave them that information, Elijah. Someone atourfucking company.”
Elijah frowns across the dining table while nodding his agreement. “The Fuller patent could have been put down to coincidence given we were all chasing the same goal, but this one was ours. Nobody knew about it. When I find out who leaked that information, I will…” His sentence is cut off by a snarl.
Nathan takes the newspaper from me and scans the article again. We’ve all read it at least half a dozen times. It’s the reason all of us James boys, along with our dad, canceled our weekend plans and are sitting in our childhood home on a Saturday morning. “So this is definitely a leak?” he asks, his brow furrowed.
“Nobody but key people in our organization knew about that patent. And now here it is, splashed across theNew YorkfuckingTimesby Spartan.” I growl the name of our biggest competitor. Before now, despite our guts telling us something different, the contracts they won over us could be explained. They’re a well-established company, almost as old as ours. And while they’renot as big, their relatively new CEO is some young genius entrepreneur, at least that’s what Astyn Bartley was named byTimemagazine last year. We lose out on contracts all the time—it’s part of business. But this tech was ours, and the patent was being filed Monday morning. Spartan, those fuckers, filed theirs yesterday afternoon.
“I can’t believe it. In our own company,” Pop says sadly.
I give him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. “We’ll find out who it was, Pop.”
“And fucking destroy them,” Elijah snaps.
“So what’s the plan?” Drake asks. “The people who knew about that patent will also have seen this article. Everyone will be suspicious and twitchy as fuck.”
“But they’ll also be eager to find out whoever the fuck did this, because they’ve potentially put their jobs on the line too,” Nathan adds.
“We’ll get everyone involved in tomorrow,” I say. “Don’t give a damn that it’s Sunday. Between us, we’ll be able to tell who’s lying.”
“What if it’s not one of the people involved in the patent though?” Maddox says as he places a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the table. Cooking is his love language. I’d prefer Scotch at a time like this, but they smell incredible. All of us except Pop, who’s watching his diet, reach for one.
I finish chewing and ask, “What do you mean?”
“You said the information was leaked? Then it could have been anyone in the company with access to your systems. Theoretically.”
Elijah shakes his head. “Our firewalls are locked down tight, and we check for security breaches every day. There haven’t been any reported.”
Maddox takes a bite of a cookie. “I know you guys work in tech, but it’s developing faster than anyone can keep up with.With the strides in AI and whatnot, who’s to say it’s not some disgruntled minion who got passed up for a promotion or has no morals and wants to make a fast buck.”
I finish my second cookie and debate reaching for a third. Fuck, they’re good. “Bro has a point.”
Elijah regards him intently. “You sure you don’t want to come work in the family business, Mad?”
Maddox scoffs. “Fuck no.”
Our father huffs—he built that business from nothing—but Maddox flashes him a warm smile that instantly appeases the old man. It’s so good to see them together after everything that happened before Maddox left. It brings a lump to my throat when I recall him storming out of this house and swearing he’d never come back. It was years before he did.
“We still need to talk to everyone involved in that project,” Elijah says, bringing me back to our current problem. “It doesn’t hurt to lay our cards out on the table. Make them sweat a little.”
“It will have to be tomorrow,” I remind him. “I leave for the conference in Philly Monday morning and won’t be back until Wednesday.”
Elijah signals his agreement.
“If it is a leak at Jamestech, can the security team be fully trusted?” Nathan says.
Pop sighs. “Until we find out exactly who it is, everyone is a suspect. And if this goes back to the last patent Spartan took from under our noses, it’s been going on for a year at least.”
