“Sloane, I am not going to lose you to this. You’re too valuable to me,” he barks. A cool wind blows against my skin, and I realize that it’s sprinkling. “Get back in your car for now. I’ll send backup.”

As the rain picks up, I wait in my car. For fifteen minutes, I rock back and forth, just wanting to stop whatever’s happening in there.

What could be taking so long?

We were impenetrable. We took all of the precautions, avoiding nearly every form of digital communication. Nobody at our company knew about this except for us.

So how the hell did they find out?

A black van appears far too late, and I approach the dock with decorated armed guards.

If anything happened here, nobody told any of the workers. They move about their days, talking about their disdain for their bosses while wheeling jacks back and forth. Since it’s later in the day, the crowd is much smaller, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary otherwise.

That’s when a big bearded man approaches one of the guards.

“Are you here with Jarn Enterprise?” he asks, holding a clipboard.

He looks awkwardly back at me.

“I’m here with Jarn Enterprise,” I say, much more calmly than I feel. “What’s going on?”

“We noticed a discrepancy with one of your shipments,” he says.

I feel somebody emerge behind me in my peripheral vision.

“We went to verify your items, and somewhere between the trucks arriving and us unloading them, we ran into some shortages.”

In the distance, I can see Tarek stepping out of his car. Even from here, I can see his flaring nostrils, his bared fangs, and his bloodshot eyes.

We were robbed.

CHAPTER 25

Tarek

I slam the door once I get out of the car. Since Sloane notified me of the bust, all I can see is red. This was supposed to be the plan to catch the damned spy. Now everything’s up in shit. Even worse is that I’m left without nearly anything to present to the investors.

“What the fuck happened, exactly?” It’s the first thing I ask Sloane once I approach her.

I cross my arms over my chest, trying not to explode. She sighs sharply and takes out the envelope. Clear as day, I can see my crap being taken.

My hands shake as I flail the envelope around. “Nice try? So your plan was already found out before we could act?”

She nods. “I have no idea how they knew about it. This should’ve worked. I was so sure about it.”

I rub my temples to try and calm down. It’s so hard to keep my anger at bay when this could literally ruin me. This shipment was the key to the next product launch, and now most of it is gone.

I glance over at the trucks. It doesn’t even look like someone stole from them, save for the crap they so graciously left behind.

“Do you have at least an idea of where they could’ve run off to? Obviously that fuck face is behind it all but we can’t just keep going on without concrete evidence.”

Sloane points to the envelope in my hand.

“Salvatore gave me the envelope, which is connected to Craig.”

I swallow hard and take a deep breath.

“You know that won’t be enough. Now do you have any idea where they could be?”