Page 121 of Gather the Storm

Diana looked at me, and I wished I could say she looked sympathetic, but the truth was, she wore no expression at all. She may as well have been at a school board meeting.

“Do you understand that you may still opt out of working with Grayson Cantwell?” she asked. “That Piers Cantwell is more than willing to reassign his son Grayson to another project in the interest of making you comfortable?”

It was the last name that gave it away: the meeting was being recorded.

I couldn’t see the recorder, but I was one hundred percent sure it was there somewhere. No wonder everything felt so formal and forced. Piers was covering the company’s ass, which was not to say I didn’t think he also wanted to be supportive. Of everyone in the room, he was the one who’d treated me with the most sympathy and respect. Diana was clearly just doing her job.

“I understand,” I said.

“And you don’t wish to exercise that option?” Diana asked.

I hesitated. This was my last chance to say I didn’t want to work with Gray.

But it felt impossible to change my mind now, even though Diana was saying I could.

“No,” I said. “I’m sure Gray and I can work together.”

“Excellent,” Piers said with a smile. “And I hope it goes without saying that my door is open, Diana’s door is open…” Diana nodded when he looked at her. “You can come to us at any time with issues or concerns.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We stood and Piers tipped his head at Gray, like a parent urging a child to say thank you for a cookie.

Gray held out his hand. I looked at it for a beat before I managed to extend my own. The last thing I wanted to do was touch Gray Cantwell, but we shook anyway, because I guess in corporate America it was good form to shake hands with your almost rapist when he apologized.

He squeezed my hand. Hard.

“I look forward to working with you again.” His gaze met mine, his eyes cold. “Daisy.”

I pulled away as fast as I could without it seeming weird, then hurried to make my exit. I couldn’t get away from Gray fast enough, not just because the whole thing was awkward and uncomfortable, but because I’d seen the hate that shone like a dark promise in his eyes.

And I knew then that this wasn’t really over.

Chapter 66

Daisy

Iwas still feeling weird about the whole thing at lunch. I’d avoided Gray as much as I could, but his voice echoed through the halls of the office, his laughter as he joked with Natalie and Kyle seeming to mock everything that had happened between us.

He’d almost raped me and he wasn’t sorry and now he was back at the office.

And I was the one who’d allowed it to happen. No wonder he was laughing.

He’d been forced to attend anti-harassment training, but it had been a small price to pay for the privilege of shoving his immunity in my face every day at work.

I’d planned to leave at lunch — to take a walk or a drive or anything at all to get out of the office and clear my head — but Diana had ordered food again and it seemed rude to leave.

I grabbed one of the sandwiches and a bag of a chips instead, then took them to my office under the guise of working through lunch.

When I got to my desk, I took out Blake’s cell phone and played around with a few more password possibilities, but nothing worked, and eventually, I stuffed it into my bag with a frustrated sigh.

Aloha could probably open it — Jace and Wolf were meeting with him today to see what he’d found on the security cameras near Old Mountain Road the day the broken vase had been delivered — but he was part of the Blades. I didn’t want him to know I was trying to crack Blake’s phone, didn’t want it to get back to the Beasts.

“No more secrets, sunshine,” Wolf had said after the consequences of my snooping in his room.

The tone of his voice had been mild, but there had been something in his eyes, something that said it would be foolish to push him too far, that even he had limits.

But maybe I could find someone else, some other hacker who could get into Blake’s phone. I put the idea on the back burner while I finished my lunch and went back to work.

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