Imperfect intentions, p.17
Imperfect Intentions, page 17
Everyone claps enthusiastically again.
The words make me reel. As far as I know, the announcement wasn’t on the agenda.
From across the room, I catch Violet’s gaze. Her brow is pinched. This comes as a surprise to her too.
“You know me well enough by now to know I didn’t take the selection process lightly. The man I’m promoting is a man who’ll not only be on the frontline of innovation, but also a man who’ll be able to fill my—may I dare say—very competent shoes. He’s a man of honor and exceptional talent, a programmer of the kind the country has never seen.”
Whispering breaks out among the crowd.
It’s too early. I’m yet to present him with the software.
“Everyone,” Gus says. “Please put your hands together and welcome Starley Solutions’ newest shareholder, Elliot Starley.”
It’s like a bucket of ice water in my face.
What the fuck?
A second of surprised silence follows. Carter is the first to slap his beefy palms together, a single clap filling the space before the men pick up on his cue and clap as if their lives depend on it.
Elliot straightens his jacket and walks with square shoulders to the podium.
“I’m proud of you, son,” Gus says as he shakes Elliot’s hand.
Elliot flicks his fingers, at which one of his minions pushes a trolley with a projector to the front. The junior programmer switches on the projector while Elliot takes a remote from his pocket.
Balling my hands, I look at Gus, but he doesn’t as much as glance in my direction. I may as well not exist.
It doesn’t make sense.
When did Gus decide this, and why didn’t he tell me?
Then again, he never made promises. He never told me in so many words he was going to make me a partner, but he hinted at it. He insinuated it, and I’m not an idiot when it comes to interpreting an unspoken message.
Disappointment surges hot through me. I haven’t been a part of Gus’s team for long, but I have what it takes to step into his very competent shoes. Elliot doesn’t. I guess blood is thicker than water after all.
But that’s not the worst part. That’s not what floors me. It’s the knowledge that I may have lost my chance to marry Violet now that Gus has chosen someone else for the partnership.
Resolve hardens my heart. Over my dead body will I let her get away.
I turn my face an inch and find her in the crowd. She’s standing tall and stiff, her face in profile. Her expression is hidden from me, but her rigid posture tells me this isn’t good news for her either.
Even though you can hear a pin drop in the hall, Elliot says, “May I have some silence? This won’t take long.” He clears his throat. “First of all, I’d like to thank my father, Mr. Gus Starley, for being my inspiration and role model.” He gives his father a private smile. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Dad.”
Gus inclines his head, accepting the compliment with the pride he used to reserve for me, the pride he showed me during our lunch with Carter.
“Secondly,” Elliot continues, “I’d like to thank you for your support. A good leader is nothing without a great team.”
Is he trying to make everyone puke?
“I have big plans for Starley Solutions, but I’m not going to ask you to trust me blindly. I’m going to share my vision of the company with you, starting with the project I developed that will not only put us on the map in the global market but also turn Starley Solutions into an international household name.”
Someone coughs.
“This better be interesting,” Carter says, still not getting that his jokes aren’t funny.
Elliot switches on the projector. A simulator app fills the screen.
I go stone cold.
It’s my app, the dating app that runs the phishing program in the background.
Impossible.
Not so.
He clicks on the menu to explain the functionality, leaving out the illegal part.
I go from cold to hot, anger pushing up from my feet to my head in a tsunami wave of heat as the ugly truth settles.
Elliot Starley stole my work.
He plagiarized a program that took me over three years to complete.
Three years of my life.
He ripped three years away and has the fucking nerve to stand in front of a room full of people and tell the filthy lie to my face.
Carter whistles. “This is big stuff, Elliot.”
How?
My computer is password protected. Only Gus can override it. Yet my intuition says it wasn’t Gus. He’s a dangerous and unscrupulous son of a bitch, but I find it hard to believe that he broke into my computer and stole my work to give it to his mediocre son just to make him a partner. Gus is too set on his rule of earning your own way. It’s the motto that defines his life and business.
If not Gus, then who?
I turn my head, looking over the crowd. My gaze finds Violet again. Like everyone else, her attention is trained on Elliot. She’s pale, her cheeks as ghastly white as the decorations in the hall. She leans a palm on the food table as if her legs can’t support her weight. The sudden physical weakness isn’t a result of her high heels or her disability. She’s expressive. She’s always been. And what I see on her face unleashes the fury of hell inside me.
Guilt.
I clench and unclench my fingers, my attention torpedoed on her as Elliot demonstrates the pinnacle of my life’s work to a room full of instant admirers.
It’s not a truth, not until I prove it. It’s just a suspicion, but it slices through flesh and bone for the blade to lodge in my heart. However, I don’t want to believe it.
Wrestling with myself, I tell myself I’m wrong as I stare at her beautiful, innocent face while my gut already knows otherwise.
If there’s one person clever enough to find a way inside my head, it’s Violet. If she’s potent enough to make me lower my guard, she’s sly enough to break through the firewall of my computer.
Still, I’m a logical man. Always have been. I’m not making accusations without proof. A part of me doesn’t want to look for the truth, because what I may find could end something beautiful before it’s had time to begin. I don’t want to be the one who pulls the trigger and kills that fate, so I do what I never do.
I procrastinate.
I delay until Violet limps casually from the room, trying hard not to look like she’s fleeing.
Carter shoots me an irritated look as I shoulder him, making his drink spill when I turn. Elliot is mining down to the second level of the program, so absorbed in his glory he doesn’t look in my direction as the people part like the sea for Moses to let me through.
As for Gus, I can’t face him. If I do, I may kill him. If he believes Elliot wrote that program, he doesn’t deserve my respect. I’m yet to decide what to do with Elliot. When I have proof.
Violet is slower than most people when she wears sneakers. In heels, she doesn’t make it to the foyer before I catch up with her.
She gasps when I wrap my fingers around her upper arm.
“Going somewhere, Violet?”
She licks her lips, glancing over my shoulder as if she’s gauging how long it will take for someone to come to her rescue if she screams. “I’m just going outside for some air.”
“Bored of the party already?” I ask, my tone mocking.
She sounds breathless. “Yes.”
“All you had to do was say so.” I search her eyes, willing it not to be so. “I would’ve taken you home.”
“Okay then.” She looks at where I’m gripping her. “You’re hurting me.”
I let her go. My fingers are imprinted on her skin, five white indents that fade as she rubs her arm.
“Wait here,” I say, studying her face for signs when I don’t want more non-verbal confirmations. “I’ll get the car.”
She waits quietly, clutching her bag against her hip and holding her elbow with her free hand.
After pulling up next to the entrance, I seat her, secure her seat belt, and drive her home in silence.
She almost looks relieved when I pull through the gates of Gus’s property, as if she expected me to murder her on the side of the road and dump her body in the bushes.
“Thanks,” she says, already reaching for her door before I’ve parked.
The minute I cut the engine, she gets out of the car.
I’m at her side even as she straightens, cutting her off. She stares up at me with her huge, lavender-colored eyes as I corner her by planting one palm on the roof of the car and the other on the open door.
Her throat ripples as she swallows.
Wrapping a hand around her neck, I trace the vein that pulses under her skin with my thumb. Her blood pumps under my fingertips. I drag her closer while threading my free hand in the long strands of hair to cup her head, messing up her hairdo and holding her like a fragile butterfly as I slowly lower my head until our lips are aligned.
Her breath catches on a hitch when I close the last hairbreadth of distance and brush my mouth over hers. I kiss her gently, softly, with all the tenderness I can muster, because if what I suspect is true, it will be the last time I kiss her like this.
Chapter 26
Violet
* * *
My insides quake as Leon leads me to the front door. It takes everything I have not to puke right there on the porch.
When I fish my key from my bag, he wraps his fingers over mine, takes the key, and unlocks the door. Everything he does is gentle, and it confuses the hell out of me. It scares me even more than what it confuses me, and I’m already terrified. His reaction when he saw Elliot’s presentation tells me Elliot wasn’t discreet in hiding his plagiarism. Leon knows Elliot stole his work.
“Goodnight, Violet,” he says, his tone matching the softness of his actions.
He stares at me with a look that consumes, a look that’s born from fire and bred in hell. The flames seem to destroy him from the inside out. It’s the tormented look of an artist who observes beauty he’ll never be able to replicate. It’s a look of unrequited longing, of having lost something before you’ve owned it. It darkens his eyes to a stunning hue of Guinness and gold, a turbulent maelstrom of dark, foamy waters. Like the first time he walked in on me in the kitchen at the office, I’m mesmerized by those eyes, held captive by his suffering and my guilt. In the golden flecks at the bottom of that whirlpool, retribution glows like a secret source of light. It makes his eyes shine with a sinister promise, a layer of vengeance painted over the pain.
He knows.
The corner of his mouth lifts, but what he offers me isn’t a smile. It’s more like the warning a hunter would give his prey before moving in for the kill. My heart beats with heavy thuds, each one a fist that slams into my ribcage.
I’m trapped.
The fire in his gaze becomes a cold blaze. The heat turns to frost. He cuts me loose, his attention shifting inwardly so suddenly I feel like a boat without an anchor in a stormy sea.
Leaving me standing on the threshold, he walks to his car, gets in, and drives away without looking over his shoulder or glancing in the rearview mirror. It’s as if I don’t exist anymore. Why that shatters me in ways surpassing the horrible guilt festering in the pit of my stomach, I have no idea.
When the taillights of his car disappear through the gates, I go inside, close the door, and lean on wood. I feel sick. How many times have I wished I’d never been born? Too many to count. But this is the first time I think I didn’t deserve to be born. I’d give my legs to the devil to undo what I’ve done. I would’ve run faster. I would’ve stopped my mom before she walked into that house in Triomf. I would’ve made her get back into the car and drive to the hill in Auckland Park.
Fuck.
Dragging the heels of my palms over my face, I push off the door.
This is reality. These are the choices we made.
I wish I could go numb like after the time Gus had shot that poor man, but my mind doesn’t allow me the reprieve. It punishes me, tying my stomach in a knot of anxiety as I climb the stairs to my bedroom and slip inside. Thankfully, my mom is already asleep. I wouldn’t have been able to keep a poker face and pretend my world wasn’t coming to an end. A very dark, very twisted part of me wishes Leon would just kill me and get it over with. At least then these unbearable feelings eating me alive will end. But that’s a coward’s way of thinking. I was born to fight. The only thing I know is fighting. Surviving.
How will Leon avenge himself? Will he push a gun against my head? Will he strangle me? Drown me? Beat me to death? The alarming thing is that those thoughts don’t scare me half as much as the idea of him simply saying nothing. Dragging out the wait is the worst kind of torture.
I don’t know for how long I sit on the floor in the dark with my back against the wall, but it’s after one in the morning when the front door slams and Gus and Elliot’s boisterous laughter funnels through the crack under my door. They’re not even trying to be quiet. Typical assholes.
“See you in the morning,” Gus says.
“Have a good one, Dad,” Elliot replies.
A door closes somewhere down the hall. Footsteps fall on the tiles. When they stop just outside, I scramble to my feet and yank my door open. Elliot stands in front of his bedroom, his hand on the doorknob.
He gives me a once-over. “You left early. You could’ve had the decency to congratulate me before slipping away.”
“How could you do that?” I bite out, keeping my voice down.
He raises a brow. “Do what?”
Putting my face in his, I say, “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Actually, I don’t,” he taunts.
“How much of that presentation was your own, and how much of it was Leon’s work?”
He doesn’t reply.
“Oh my God,” I say, feeling weak with shock. “You didn’t even try to change it.”
His silence gives me the answer.
I clench my hands at my sides, resisting the urge to punch him. “How could you claim his work to be yours?”
“What did you think I was going to do with the program? Gush over its brilliance in secret? Lock it away in my drawer? Ask him to autograph it for me? You knew exactly why I wanted the program.”
“I didn’t,” I say, shaking with anger.
“Come on, Violet. It’s too late to cry innocent or naïve. You played your part in helping me gain my rightful place in the company.” He gives me a wry smile. “I suppose I owe you a thank you.”
“He knows,” I say, gritting my teeth. “He knows it was me.”
“If you’ve been clever, he won’t be able to prove it. It’ll be his word against mine.”
“What if he can? What if he does?”
“Prove what?” he asks, menace cutting into his expression as he leans closer. “I wrote that program. It’s mine. That’s all anyone needs to know. That’s all you need to say.” Taking his phone from his pocket, he wakes it up, swipes across the screen, and turns it toward me, showing me the evidence that can never leak out. “Or this comes to light. Is that what you want?”
“No,” I say, clenching my jaw.
“Good.” He gets out of my space. “Now go clean up your face. You’re a mess, just like your trashy mother.” He opens his door and pauses. “Oh, and if you thought deleting a few lines of code was going to prevent me from getting it to work, you really underestimated my intelligence.”
With that mocking declaration, he shuts the door in my face.
I’m shivering with fury and indignation, aimed not only at him but mostly at myself, because Elliot is right. I knew what he was going to do would be bad. Leon isn’t always an asshole. Not to me. Sometimes, he’s kind. Especially to me. But he knows. His behavior was too odd. My only consolation is that he doesn’t have proof. I can only hope he’ll never find proof. Even so, I have a feeling I’m about to find out what it’s like to be on Leon’s bad side.
Chapter 27
Leon
* * *
Cutting off all emotions, I drive straight to the office. If I don’t shut down my feelings, I may not go through with this. I may not want to face the truth, that the first and only woman I fell for stabbed me in the back, but turning a blind eye makes you weak, and I can’t be weak in this game. Weakness can cost me my life. Weakness can give my enemies the opportunity to destroy me. Weakness won’t allow me to protect my woman, even if said woman is a traitor.
And I know.
I know because Violet Starley carries her heart on her sleeve. I saw it in her face when Elliot presented my work and claimed it as his own.
Still, I take nothing for granted, not until I’m sat in front of my desk and my fingers are flying over the keyboard, punching in my password.
The night guard puts his head around the door. “Everything okay in here, Mr. Hart?”
Since the night I told him I’m going to marry Violet, he treats me with considerably more respect.
“Yes,” I say, not glancing up from my screen. “I have a deadline for tomorrow. It won’t take long.”
“Take your time.” He adds with a chuckle, “I’m here all night.”
I wait until he disappears before I call up the camera feed. Unbeknown to Gus, I uploaded extra security measures on my desktop computer. They’re well hidden, running undetectably in the background. The spyware I activate is a program I developed myself. It triggers the webcam to record the user whenever the screen is woken up.
I type in a command, bringing up the login dates and times. It’s easy to spot what I’m looking for. It’s a time and date when I haven’t been in the office.
I hesitate with my finger hovering above the enter button. If I press that command, there’s no turning back. There’ll be no unseeing it, no venturing off this road. It’ll slay me, but I don’t have a choice. I can’t afford the luxury of turning a blind eye. I can’t afford not knowing who my enemies are, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting Elliot pocket my work and move into the corner office when I earned that space.
