His Secret Desire (24 page)

Alex pulled me back to him and kissed me. He pressed his face against the side of my own face and we stayed like that for a minute, silent. Then he kissed my cheek and began to dress himself again. I dressed myself quietly and we stole glances at each other, smiling coyly when we caught each other looking.

I drank an entire water bottle in four large gulps. I was feeling calm and relaxed. Alex sat next to me, his hand on my leg, rubbing slowly in circles. I rested my head against his shoulder and for a moment, everything seemed alright.

Chapter Twenty-four

The limousine stopped. Alex gave my leg a little playful squeeze and he let himself out of the limousine and turned to hold my hand as I walked out. I was looking at a plain grey building for only a moment before Alex led me quickly inside.

Inside, there was a small lobby area that had a bench and two elevators. There was nobody in sight. A security firm officer had walked inside with us, and now Alex informed him that from here on we’d be fine without him, and that the officer could come back when Alex called him. Apparently, we were going to be here for a while. The man nodded to Alex and quickly left.

We stood in front of the elevators. There were no buttons on the wall and I looked around for any way of calling the elevator, but I didn’t see anything. Then the elevator door on the left opened and Alex held out his arm for me to board. He followed and the doors closed behind us.

The elevator began its ascension and when I looked around, I noticed there were no buttons anywhere inside either. Wherever we were going, it was either automated or controlled by someone else. The elevator doors opened and we walked out.

In front of us was a large desk with a security guard sitting behind it. He tipped his hat to Alex and Alex nodded back with a friendly smile.

“Good afternoon, Hal,” Alex said. We walked by the desk and Alex opened up a singular door and we walked into another room.

The first thing I noticed was a beautiful woman in a sharp dress. Then the sound of a dozen men typing on computer keyboards flooded my ears. They were furiously typing away at what sounded like a thousand words per minute, almost as if they sought to destroy the keyboards by punishing them with rapid typing. The woman was walking around the room, analyzing screens and saying things to the men individually.

The woman noticed us and a smile formed on her face. She walked over to us briskly and opened her arms to Alex.

“Alex!” She said. The woman hugged Alex and I felt a wave of confusion mixed with jealousy. “You’re looking rather handsome today. And this must be Samantha.”

“Samantha, this is Michelle Harrow,” Alex said.

“Pleased to meet you, Michelle.” We shook hands.

She was stunningly gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that would stop men in the streets and cause their tongues to hang out of their heads like they had just been struck in the head with a heavy object. Her hair was dark and hung just above her shoulders. Her suit was feminine and sharp, striking really. When she shook my hand, it was firm. The way she stood immediately commanded a high degree of attention and respect from whomever was before her.

I studied her face and realized that while she was gorgeous, she was also familiar looking. It could have been that she was a model, which would have been probable given her level of beauty, but it wasn’t that. I looked over to Alex and then back at Michelle. They bared a strong resemblance to each other. Did Alexander Strauss have a sister that I didn’t know about?

“Michelle runs this company which operates under the Strauss Engines umbrella,” Alex told me. “But it’s strictly off the books. I pay for it out of my own pocket. She answers to me, and no one else.”

Michelle’s eyes were a bright blue color that perfectly mirrored Alex’s.

“I hand-picked Michelle to run this computer division. I needed somebody I could trust. Then she hand-picked each of these analysts.”

“Saying you ‘hand-picked’ me when it was you who paid for all of my college tuition and then set this company up for me is a little bit of a simplification. But I did pick all of the analysts in the room, although they typically call themselves hackers, and they don’t come cheap, but they’re loyal and hardworking.”

“What do you have for me?”

“Well, cuz,” Michelle said. Cuz was obviously short for cousin. I looked over Michelle one more time and realized that it made perfect sense. It must have been on the mother’s side; Michelle bore a strong resemblance to Alex’s mother. “We went into all of the correspondences between Henderson and the shareholders. There wasn’t much, that man Henderson was smart enough to not say too much through email, but from what he did say, we were able to determine a lot more.

“Henderson has definitely been involved in some back room deals. He has manipulated the value of the Strauss Engines’ stock. He single-handedly has devalued your entire company until the shareholders were freaked out and began pulling out. Just enough of them sold so that he bought up the shares. Now he is the primary shareholder.”

“This isn’t good,” Alex murmured.

“His actions were highly illegal, Alex. But our monitoring isn’t exactly legal either, so you’re in a conundrum. You have to get Henderson to expose himself or admit what he’s done. It could be months or years before a formal investigation takes place, and that’s even if an investigation is started into his actions. By the time that happens, Strauss Engines will be completely destroyed.”

Alex said nothing for a full minute.

“I’ll confront him, I’ll wear a wire and a camera. I’ll tell him I know everything and that I’m going to take him down. That way he can confirm what I’ve said and we’ll use it to remove him from the board, at the very least. That way, the company will survive while we have a legal case against Henderson built.”

Michelle lead us into another room and one of the hackers from the other room followed when she called him. Alex handed over his jacket to the hacker and the man quickly disappeared with it. We sat down around a large conference desk and Michelle left the room.

“I’ll confront Henderson, alone,” Alex said gravely.

“No, I want to be there for it.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise.”

“Look, he obviously used me in this whole process somehow. Maybe we can use that against him. His anger and hatred towards me is palpable whenever I’m around. If we can get him mad enough, he might just slip up out of emotion. Henderson is way too sharp to be outwitted, even by you. But he’s still human, and we can use his emotions against him.”

Alex thought it over for a long time. Slowly, he looked at me and then nodded in agreement. It was obvious that while he agreed, he didn’t like it.

Michelle returned with a tray that had a carafe of coffee, some pastries, a bowl of bananas and apples, and bottled waters on it. She poured three cups of coffee. She took off her jacket and I saw that her arms were muscular without a shred of fat. She was just as muscular as Alex. It must definitely run in the family on the mother’s side.

Michelle grabbed a pastry and ate it, relishing every bite. When she was finished, she washed it down with her entire cup of black coffee. She then began peeling a banana and turned to us as she did so.

“My tech will be back with your coat in a few minutes. One of the buttons is being replaced with a small camera that has an incredibly high resolution. There will be no mistaking that it’s Henderson when you show it to the board later. Also, I’m having a wire laced in the lining. You’re going to be a walking movie studio, Alex.”

“Alex, maybe I should wear a wire too. Henderson is probably going to suspect you of trying something, but maybe he’ll overlook me,” I said.

Alex thought for a moment and then turned to Michelle. “Samantha has a good point, let’s get her fitted too, just as a backup. But not in her jacket. It has to be somewhere where a body scanner or a light search won’t find it. If Henderson is as paranoid as he should be, then he’ll search me. In case he finds the camera, I’ll need a backup.”

Michelle pondered this for a moment and then rose from her chair. She gave Alex the signal that she would need a minute and left the room. Alex and I waited calmly and silently. I put my hand over Alex’s on the table and he looked at me. His other hand fell over mine and squeezed it softly.

The door burst open and a twitchy young man entered. He had thick black rimmed glasses and was tall and lean. One of his arms was covered in tattoos, yet the other one was blank. He wore a white button-up shirt and skinny black pants. There were Converse All-Stars on his feet. He was holding Alex’s jacket in his hand.

“Mr. Strauss, we’ve finished your jacket,” the tech said. His voice was surprisingly deep. “The front middle button, right here, is where the camera is. You can’t see it, but it’s got a fisheye lens so it’ll capture pretty much an entire room. It’s not that great to watch, but for our purposes, it’s the best option. There are three microphones, one in the collar and one in each cuff. They are sewn in the fabric and even if you were to squeeze your fingers on where they were, it’d be hard to feel them. Everything you see and hear will feed back to us directly here at the lab. Do you have any questions?”

“No, I have no questions. You’ve done an excellent job,” Alex said. The tech thanked him and hurried out of the room. Outside, we heard him run into Michelle and apologize. Then Michelle began to talk to him and through muffled voices we could hear that he was explaining something, but it was too quiet to make out.

Michelle came in the room and handed me something small. I looked down and it was a hair-tie. I studied it in my hand and noticed that there was what looked like a black pearl attached to it. I looked up to Michelle, awaiting an explanation.

“That’s the best option we have. You put it in your hair. It’s doubtful they’ll scan the back of your hair, and it gets pretty decent reception. You should be able to hear everything in the room.”

I pulled my hair back and tied it with the now bugged hair-tie. Michelle studied me. She walked around my back and I could feel her looking at the hair-tie closely, adjusting it with her hands.

“Perfect,” she said.

“Michelle, after we get into the room with Henderson, I want you personally to be listening. If he gives you any indication that he’s about to reveal anything incriminating, I want you to patch it directly into the boardroom. Can you do that?” Alex asked.

“Yes, but how do we know that the board will be there?” Michelle asked.

“I will make sure they are there. I can call a board meeting. I’ll threaten to give away all my shares in Strauss Engines for pennies. Devalue the hell out of them. It would cost them all a lot of money if that happened. They’ll come.”

I was starting to feel excited. We were going to bring that bastard Henderson down, and if all went well, for good. This would be the beginning. Once he was ousted from the company, then he’d face legal trouble and soon enough he’d be in prison.

Alex turned to me. “Are you ready to do this?”

I was more than ready. I could feel my apprehension growing as the reality of what we were trying to do became clearer, but I was exhilarated. This would be the best revenge against Henderson, to let his own backroom plotting take him down.

“Yes,” I said simply.

Alex nodded to me and turned back to Michelle.

“I’ll convene a board meeting for tomorrow morning around ten. I’ll confront Henderson a few minutes earlier than the board meeting. He’s infamous for being punctual; he is never early or late. If I show up to his office at five to ten, he’ll be waiting.”

Michelle had written down everything that Alex said. When we got up to leave, Alex and Michelle hugged again. The gesture still struck me as slightly odd since I had never seen Alex touch anyone aside from me, although any remnants of jealousy towards Michelle were gone. I was even a little enamored with her. When this was all over, I wanted to get to know her, be friends with her. Hell, maybe she could show me how to get in shape.

I shook hands with Michelle and thanked her. Alex and I left the building the same way we entered and Alex didn’t call the security firm to escort him out.

“I think we’re in the endgame of all of this, I’m going to keep the security team around my apartment, but after tomorrow even that won’t be necessary, no matter how this turns out.”

It was late in the afternoon. Alex and I went back to his apartment, and once inside, we sat down in the living room together and I rested my head against his shoulder. It had been several hours since we had left the Strauss Engines building to visit Michelle, and I was exhausted.

Alex slowly lifted me off his shoulder and disappeared into his room. When he returned, he told me he had drawn up a bath for us. We walked up to the bathroom and Alex stripped off his clothes quickly. I was naked almost as quickly and then we slipped into the bath together. The bathtub was the size of a large hot-tub, but we sat across from each other and locked legs in one another.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. A light haze of sleep was over me, but I was still somewhat aware of my surroundings. I felt relaxed and calm, but the thought of the next day’s coming events loomed large in my mind. When I raised my head to peek over at Alex, he was looking off as if studying the horizon, yet it was now dark outside and he wasn’t looking out the window.

We didn’t have sex. It wasn’t as if we were both spent or overly tired, but it just seemed like we were both wrapped up in our own thoughts. After the bath, Alex toweled me off gently and kissed the side of my neck. It was such a sweet gesture that I grabbed him and squeezed him. He copped a feel of my ass and I kissed his neck playfully.

We went down into the living room and I laid down next to Alex on the couch, resting my head against his chest. Alex put on a foreign movie that had subtitles, and while it was really interesting and I was paying attention at first, soon my eyes grew too heavy to remain open and I fell asleep on top of Alex.

I awoke at some point after the movie had finished and I realized I was in Alex’s arms. He laid me on the bed and slowly took off my clothes, not sexually, but in a caring way. He tucked me in under the covers and then stripped himself. I noticed that Alex always slept in the nude, and I had zero complaints about it. When I saw his naked body, I wanted to reach out and touch him everywhere, but now I was beyond exhausted and the best I could do was give him a little smile and a wink. My eyes fell closed.