Page 54 of Open for Negotiation

Chapter 10

Max

It’s a nightmare walking into Fortress.

The downstairs lobby of the building is untouched, so pristine in fact that you probably wouldn’t even know something is wrong. That fact becomes crystal clear when you step off the elevators to our working floor.

Glass is everywhere as our windows and doors have been destroyed. There are pieces of computers and desks thrown about. It looks like someone took out a serious amount of rage in here. I have to step over overturned chairs and knocked over cubicle walls to even find John.

I don’t want to immediately cast blame in one direction or another, but the obvious culprit’s name is heavy in the air.

“Tell me what you know,” I demand of him, crossing my arms over my chest as we make our way through the halls and to my office.

“Not much of anything yet. We’ve tried to pull the footage from the cameras, but the hard drives were removed from the server room and the cloud has been wiped.”

I literally stop in my tracks. “What? What the fuck do you mean the cloud was wiped?”

“Whoever did this was able to gain access to the secured server room, physically remove the hardware we have in place, and access the cloud storage and delete that as well,” he says, trying his best to keep his chin up and take my anger like a man. Preventing this has always been his job. This is a fuckup on a magnificent scale.

“I want your entire team brought to the conference room in fifteen minutes. There’s only a handful of people who have access to that room, so we’re starting from there. Once we have answers, then I’ll act on termination as I sit fit.” I loosen my tie. “I’m going to have Lauren send another email to the staff, letting them know they will not be needed today. They can come back to retrieve anything they need to do from the office for the remainder of the week, but we’ll take a long weekend and reset next week.”

“Understood, sir.”

We walk through my office slowly, making note with the police officers who have responded to the call and make note of things that were disturbed or broken. Oddly enough though, it doesn’t seem that anything was outright stolen.

Hours pass in a blink. Interview after interview, statement after statement, clean up after clean up. The staff has come in and out here and there, taking things they need or want from the office for the week and weekend, each having their own unique reactions to what happened.

I wasn’t able to see Scarlett when she came through. I was in the middle of firing the entire security team and putting out a call with HR to start the vetting process for a brand-new one.

Once I’ve said all I can say to the police and fired everyone I have to fire, I plop down into my office chair, that has been shredded with a knife it seems, and exhale for the first time in hours. With my elbows on my desk, I drop my face into my hands.

What the fuck is going on?

“Who in the hell did you piss off?”

I look up at the voice and shake my head at my brother. “Well, we don’t have any concrete proof, but… I’ll give you three guesses.”

He walks across the office, picking up a piece of a shattered frame that held my college degree, examines it for a moment, then drops it. “There’s no way… right?”

“You met her. You’ve seen what she’s capable of when she’s angry. You tell me again if it’s possible.”

“What could you have possibly done to cause this kind of reaction?”

“It could have been a look she thought was wrong or a feeling she had, or even a dream, but I think this is because of a phone call she and I had the other day after you and I talked.”

“Did you call her names and threaten her? Because what could you have possibly said that triggered a reaction like this? Plus, how would she even get in?”

Scarlett

He didn’t tell me he wanted me to come back for him. He didn’t tell me he wanted to see me.

In fact, he and I haven’t really spoken today once everything started coming to light. I could see the stress written all over his face when he came by to inform everyone of what happened, and it just wasn’t the time to add more to his plate.

But the sun has long since set, the parking lot has emptied, and he’s still up in his office, working away, trying to play clean up on aisle six.

He hasn’t told me who he thinks is responsible for the break-in and security breach, but he doesn’t have to. Everyone in this office knows that Miranda had something to do with it.

I don’t understand why she can’t just tuck her tail between her legs and disappear from his life… from the lives of everyone in his orbit, because now she’s affecting those around him and what they’ve worked for.

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