Page 58 of In Love With Mr. Wrong

GRAYSON

The air in the boardroom is colder than usual, even with the late spring sun pouring through the tall glass windows. Olivia’s already here, standing by the screen with her arms crossed, her expression set to stone. The lights are dimmed, the mood clinical, and the atmosphere heavy, like the kind of stillness you get before a storm finally hits land.

I glance at the chair across from me, empty for now.

“He knows what this is about?” I ask.

Olivia nods once, tight and sharp. “I told him legal needed a final debrief on the internal access audit. Didn’t mention the results.”

“And?”

“And he’s not innocent.” Her voice is flat. “Not completely.”

She turns the screen toward me. On it, a timeline glows in cold blue and red, access logs, server activity, and a side-by-side comparison of exported metadata. Olivia’s voice doesn’t waver.

“Jared fed them real data. Early on. It wasn’t just junk. Before the red herrings, he gavePulseMatchfootage from Alexandra’s onboarding session and performance logs from Mason’s match tier. He didn’t pivot to misdirection until after the algorithm scandal broke. Until it looked like PulseMatch was going to use what they stole.”

“So he panicked,” I mutter. “Tried to fix what he broke.”

Olivia nods. “But only once he realized they weren’t protecting him.”

I fold my arms across my chest and stare at the screen. The betrayal isn’t new, but now it’s confirmed. Quantified. Inescapable.

I hear the door open before I see him.

Jared steps inside with that same neutral expression he always wears, clean-cut, glasses pushed up the bridge of his nose, collared shirt tucked neatly into slacks. He looks like someone who should be analyzing spreadsheets, not imploding legacies.

“Grayson. Olivia.” He nods, uneasy. “What’s this about?”

I motion to the seat across from me. “Sit.”

He hesitates, then obeys. Olivia taps the screen once, bringing up the login records.

“You accessed classified elite files,” she says, tone flat. “You exported performance data. You forwarded client footage. You broke protocol and compromised the integrity ofPerfectly Matched.”

Jared’s face pales, but he doesn’t look shocked. “I told you, I was trying to confuse them. Give them false leads.”

“You did,” Olivia says. “But only after you gave them something real.”

He swallows. “I…I didn’t mean to. They threatened me. I thought if I gave them something small, just enough to buy time, they’d stop.”

“Did you report it?” I ask.

Silence.

“No,” I say for him. “You handled it yourself. You decided what to share, when to share it, and now you’re shocked we figured it out.”

“I didn’t think it would go that far,” Jared says quietly. “They promised…”

“They lied,” Olivia cuts in. “Which is something you could have told us from the beginning.”

He’s breathing harder now, but not crying. He’s still trying to salvage something. “I know I messed up. But I tried to fix it. I did fix it. PulseMatch didn’t get Alexandra or Mason, they stayed. The clients never left.”

“But you broke the system to try and play hero,” I say. “You gambled with trust.”

“I wanted to protect the company.”

I meet his eyes across the table. “No. You wanted to protect yourself.”

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