Page 108 of #Bossholes

“Fuck.” He comes in with another curse, flops down in the chair across from me, and gives me a pointed look. “I was hoping to share this with both of you.”

My stomach flops, and I’m on the edge of my seat, literally and figuratively. “What is it?”

Maverick runs his fingers down the length of his tie and glances around my empty office. I’m not sure if he thinks Brantley is hiding behind the fake ficus in the corner of the room, or if he’s expecting the boogeyman to jump out and scare him. “I’ve been having Craig in IT do a little afterhours digging.”

“Okay,” I say slowly, anxious for Maverick to get to the point. They’re the ones who found the damning evidence against Kinsley. They were positive the files were accessed from her computer and the information was circulated from her email.

But then her parting words float to the surface of my brain.Did either of you assholes even consider someone was setting me up to take the fall, or do we only care about justice in the courtroom?

He leans over my desk and rests his elbows on top of some notes I had been looking through…yesterday? The day before? “I had them check out when that client information was accessed. Obviously, she was working on those cases with us, so it wouldn’t be unusual for her to be digging around during business hours.”

My damn traitorous heart hammers against my rib cage, and I’m not sure why he stopped talking, but I really need him to spit it all out. “And?”

“When we really started paying attention to the timing, our server was accessed after she’d left for the day. With us. Those files were accessed and sent from her computer, but there’s no fucking way she was the one doing it. She was with us the entire fucking time. The night we were watching movies with Colin and then when she was at the bar with you and Brant.” He runs a hand down his face, his eyes closing momentarily, and when they open, they’re laced with pain and regret.

She was with us. She couldn’t have done it. And we—no, I assumed it was all true after I found her in the coffee shop with Thomas Anderson. The meeting that was likely as innocent as she claimed.

The breath is squeezed from my lungs, and my heart jumps in my throat. It feels like the floor has vanished beneath my feet and I’m in freefall. My head—the whole world—is spinning, and I’m going to be sick.

“She was set up?” My voice is hoarse, my throat full of broken glass.

“Looks like it.” He slams a hand down on my desk, sending papers flying, and neither one of us make an attempt to stop them “She fucking told us. We should have listened, questioned things. We let her go, Wyatt. We fucking let her go.”

“And what do we do now?”

“Fuck if I know. We don’t deserve her.”

He’s right. Of course, he’s right. “We don’t, but I’m selfish enough to want her anyway.”

We need to make this right. We need to find her, but first we’ve got to find Brantley. Where the fuck is he?

FIFTY-SIX

Brantley

I couldn’t stand beingin that fucking godforsaken office another second. You’d think I’d go home. Or roam the city. Or sit in a coffee shop for hours on end.

But no.

I’m sitting in the front lobby of Thomas Anderson’s building. This is the third day this week I’ve spent my day here, close enough to confront him but too chicken to actually do it.

His confirmation will be one more twist of the knife protruding from my back, and I’m not sure I can handle another blow. Especially not from him.

There was a time I considered him one of my best friends. I was engaged, in love, and ready to take on the world. I was so sure Whitney was the one, that we were months away from settling down and starting a family. Then I finished up early at the library and walked in on the two of them in bed together.

I’m not sure which betrayal was worse, the one from my best friend or the woman I thought I loved.

She was my world, and everything came crashing down that day.

Over the years I accepted that I would grow old alone. I’d never have kids or a family outside of my brother. I didn’t let myself want a future that was so out of my grasp. Until Kinsley.

I fell hard and fast for her, and I realized what I had with Whitney paled in comparison. I allowed myself to dream of a better future of all those things I locked away because I thought I was too broken to have them.

Thomas took all that from me twice.

I drop my head in my hands and let my failure, my lapse in judgment, sink its claws into me. My chest is empty, my heart missing, but I don’t need it. It’s only led me down a path to ruin.

And not only did I ruin things for myself, but my friends too.

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