Page 89 of Big & Bossy

“Angela’s going to make fun of you,” she said as if that was any point at all.

“Angela already makes fun of me. I can take it,” I grinned. I popped the top of the box back on, labeled the side with a Sharpie, and set it into the To Move pile by the door. This was going to take way longer than I thought, but I was hoping I’d be in the new office by the end of the weekend.

————

The new campus was buzzing with life as I walked through the halls, Mandy padding along behind me as I pushed the crate of boxes toward the elevator.

We had a meeting in thirty minutes with security, lawyers, and Harry. Supposedly he was actually going to turn up for once, and I could tell by the way Mandy fiddled with her wrists and fingers that she was dreading it.

As much as I didn’t want to put her in that position, her presence was necessary. If Harry wanted to keep this out of court, she was going to have to negotiate the terms of that agreement on her own.

“Hey,” I said, dragging her attention back to me as we stepped onto the clear glass elevator. “Do you want to see something top secret?”

She cracked a grin, a little chuckle seeping out. “How secret is top secret?”

“Well, it’s not technically secret. More of an off-limits thing.”

“Off limits to everyone, or off limits to me?”

I pressed the B button and presented my card to the scanner. The doors closed in front of us, the elevator purring to a start and beginning to descend. “Off limits to everyone except me and a select few engineers and programmers. The list is about six people long.”

Her eyes widened as she realized where we were heading, straight down to the lowest floor. “Only six people?”

“Not including myself.”

The elevator slowly came to its smooth halt, the doors parting in front of us to a small room with a door. I pushed the cart forward and to the side, out of the way.

“You’re not planning on, like, murdering me down here, right?”

I laughed as I stuck my key in the lock of the door, twisting three full rotations to the right and once to the left. “I guess you’ll just have to trust that I’m not.”

I pushed the door open, bright, faux-natural light leaking through. In an almost completed circle around the edges of the room, the supercomputer whirred, little wires embedded into the glass floor leading to the center of the circle where a pillar encased in glass sat, a locked door on the front for ease of access if we needed to do repairs.

“I was wondering what this room was,” Mandy said, her voice quiet from the shock as she took it in. “The blueprints for it looked so strange.”

“Well, now you know.”

“Yeah.” She blinked, her eyes struggling to decide what to focus on. “So, what is it?”

I laughed and stepped across the glass, toward the second most important object in the room besides Mandy. “This, princess, is Infinius.”

————

Showing Mandy the room where the most important bit of tech in the entire company sat wasn’t exactly on my list of plans for the day, but I was glad I did it. If she had any lingering doubts on whether or not I trusted her completely, I hoped showing her that swayed them.

Plus, it put her in a slightly better mood for the meeting.

She breathed out a shaky breath as she adjusted the collar of her jacket, her eyes searching mine for the confidence to go in the room. “I can do it. Right?”

“Of course you can,” I grinned. “And if he says a single fucking word other than ‘okay’, we take him to court and drain him for every penny he’s worth, and then some.”

“I don’t want to ruin his life,” she mumbled.

“You might after this.”

“Why?”

“We’ve, uh, done some more digging,” I sighed, taking her hand in mine and giving it a squeeze. “Do you want to know now or in there?”

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