Page 149 of The Scandal You Started
She closed her fingers around the back of his hand as she returned her attention to Victor. “We want to find a way to stay together.”
Victor’s chest sank on an exhale, and his gaze went still and apprehensive behind his glasses. “Do you trust me?”
Confused, and a little taken aback, Rayna’s brows pinched. “Always, V.”
“Then let me handle this.”
Rayna couldn’t help feeling like there was some obscure meaning to his words, but she nodded. “Okay.”
A few minutes later, they were all summoned into the meeting room they’d been waiting outside of. The seven members of the POTeM Board—four women and three men—sat on one side of the long, white, rectangular table, while Rayna, Dominic, Victor, and the others sat on the opposite side.
Tense silence gripped the atmosphere as Dr Jim Pine, the CEO of Two Worlds Research Limited, the company that was the face of the POTeM project, pointed a thin, beady stare at Rayna directly across from her.
Around a similar age to Declan Griffin, with short brown hair littered with white, deeply set eyes, and a clean, rounded jaw, Jim Pine was an unsmiling and detached man who’d never been overly pleasant nor rude all the times Rayna had interacted with him. But there was a colder edge to him in the crisp white shirt, his hands clasped atop the table, as his gaze shifted to Dominic on her left, and then Victor on her other side.
“Where are Declan and Winnie Griffin?” Jim asked, his voice firm.
“No answer,” Victor said blandly.
Jim then turned to Lang, the stout, warm-toned man on his right. “They didn’t answer my calls or emails either,” Lang said.
Jim’s jaw rocked once. “Then we’ll start without them.” He flicked his sharp stare back to Rayna. “Do you know why this meeting has been called?”
Dominic squeezed Rayna’s hand under the table as she raised her chin to a stubborn angle. “Yes.”
“And do you admit to engaging in an intimate relationship with a Study, despite knowing it goes against the clearly stated guidelines of the project?”
“Yes.”
Jim cocked his chin. “You don’t sound remorseful, Miss Faez.”
She almost smirked. “Because I’m not. I knew exactly what I risked choosing to be intimate with Lord Norland. And if I had to go back and do it again, I’d still make the same choice.”
“In that case, do you think you should be allowed to keep your job?” Sheun, a black woman with braided hair, asked, two seats down from Jim.
“Yes,” Rayna answered. “I am good at my job. I work with dedication. I have never before caused any problems, and despite getting involved with Lord Norland, we still completed both the report and project on time and to a high standard. So while I don’t think I should be exempt from punishment, yes, I do think I should be allowed to keep my job.”
“Evidently, you’re not good at your job, Miss Faez, if you’ve caused a scandal by breaking arguably one of the most important rules of the project,” Jim countered.
Rayna didn’t reply. Not because she didn’t have the words to. She chose instead to tame the vicious fury rolling off Dominic with reassuring caresses over the back of his hand in the hopes he didn’t jump across the table and throw Jim against the wall.
In her silence, Jim moved his attention between Victor and Monty. “All the guards stated Lord Norland displayed an obvious interest in Miss Faez in his quarantine room, so why, Dr Johnson and Dr Sanz, did you allow Miss Faez to be his Guardian?”
“Because it was displayed first by Lord Norland, and there’s nothing in the guidelines against that,” Monty answered. “But Miss Faez didn’t reciprocate his interest, so no rules were deemed broken as a result. There was no reason to prevent her from being his Guardian.”
“But Miss Faez was not meant to be his Guardian, was she?” Lang said. “It was meant to be you, Dr Harris.”
River shifted in his seat. “Yes, it was meant to be me. But Lord Norland didn’t want me to be his Guardian.”
Jim Pine scoffed. “I didn’t know we allowed Studies to pick and choose who their Guardians were.”
“We’ve never forced a Study to work with a Guardian they don’t want to work with,” Victor said, his voice as ice-cold as his irises.
“But this wasn’t such a case, was it, Dr Johnson?” the CEO said, an equally cool undercurrent in his words. “You and Dr Sanz not only allowed Miss Faez to work with Lord Norland but also allowed them to remain together while knowing what was going on between them, making you complicit in their affair.” His attention moved along their row of chairs. “Making youallcomplicit, and subject to termination of your contracts.”
Rayna stiffened as anger fanned across her skin. She wasn’t going to let Dr Pine threaten everyone else’s jobs for something that she and—
“You cannot mean to suggest any of these men would have been capable of putting an end to my‘affair’with Miss Faez,” Dominic said, his voice deep and creepily calm. “Because I can assure you, Dr Harris could have been my Guardian, we could have lived on the other side of the state, and I still would have fallen in love with Miss Faez. I still would have pursued her in every manner possible. No one or thing could have had enough power to stop me. So do not lay blame on these men when there is nothing they could have done other than watch it happen.”
