RAGE (The Rage Series Book 1) (10 page)

              At that second, his rhythm increased. Within moments, he was moving against her at a fevered pitch. Each time he slid within her, she was taken closer and closer to her peak. Clinging to him, Charlotte thrashed. Her entire body arched as she came, her vision going white with the intensity of her completion. Dimly, she felt the rush of David's warmth inside her as he jerked, reaching his own orgasm.

              Then, they lay silently together for what seemed like an eternity, utterly spent.

              David finally shifted, making her gasp as he slid from her to settle at her side. When she turned to face him, she found his expression contemplative, and she smiled slightly. “Something on your mind?”

              His gray eyes met hers, and he took her in from head-to-toe before wrapping an arm around her and pulling her against him. “You are
nothing
like I imagined.”

              The young woman only laughed, perplexed by his statement. “Is that a good thing?”

              David didn't answer. To her surprise, he had already fallen asleep. Curious, she gazed up at him, marveling over how fast his face had gone lax with slumber. He must be exhausted. They were working him double time at the office, and he had certainly expended no small amount of strength on the loving he'd just put on her.

              Closing her own eyes, she snuggled against him. After hours spent obsessing, she'd finally had the man in her bed. As many times as she had imagined their coupling, the reality of it had been so incredible that her fantasies paled in comparison.

              Addy was going to kill her.

              She didn’t know how on earth would she be able to look at him now and not want to jump his bones while he was supposed to be explaining technical details. Atop that, what she'd just done was far outside of company regulations.

              However, at the moment, she didn't give a damn. She would worry about it later. For the first time in a long time, all thoughts of her overbearing father, the company she ran, and her own doubts were gone from her mind. She was at peace.

              And she slept.

             
David stared at the computer screen in front of him.

              Everything had changed.

              In the space of only a few months, he'd gone from being obsessed with searching for anything he could use to take down Mathers Incorporated to finding himself under the spell of its CEO, the daughter of the man who had ruined his family.

              When had it happened?

              He supposed that while they'd been working together she'd plied him with smiles, shown her kindness, and impressed him with her intelligence. During that time, he'd realized that the woman wasn't her father. Where Emerson Mathers was paranoid, his daughter was open and trusting. Where he was selfish and overbearing, she was generous and gracious. Where he graced the tabloids with tales of his callousness, her image was on the cover of Esquire and Fortune 500, both of whom praised her ingenuity.

              Charlotte couldn't be more different from the man who'd raised her if she tried. Over the past week, they'd contemplated what it meant if they continued to see each other, and he'd realized how little influence Emerson had actually had on the girl.

              After a tech session one night, she revealed to him that it had mostly been nannies and housekeepers who had raised her. She'd worked hard in school to escape her father's influence, and she found herself torn between seeking his affection and despising his single-minded behavior. When she'd thought that she could finally be free from him, he'd saddled her with the company. From what she told him, the man was still attempting to run it despite the fact that he was supposed to be retired.

              After she revealed exactly how she felt about her own flesh and blood, David felt all the years of resentment and hatred he'd hosted for her begin to melt away. The wounds of his father's suicide still cleaved deep; but, with each passing day, he realized more and more that bringing Charlotte into his plans for revenge could only cause her irreparable damage. While this notion hadn't given him pause before, it did now.

              He wasn’t sure if he really willing to steamroll over her to achieve his goals.

              If he was, then he was staring the answer to all his problems in the face. It was an article from deep in the archives and buried in a secret file on her computer. The news clipping was small and short, but it detailed an occurrence that had happened a mere three years ago. Charlotte had signed with a financial firm that had promised to streamline Mathers' spending plans and put them in the black for the first time in a decade. Instead, the company had made off with millions of dollars in Mathers funds, and Charlotte was left to take the brunt of the decision. The article he'd found was the only one detailing the occasion because the situation was quickly stifled and pulled from all media sources.

              However, if he so wished, he could bring it to light again.

              It would be cruel and twisted, but if he could make the company's principal investors question the leadership of their current CEO, he could begin to pick the firm apart from the inside out. In each and every one of the devices he had developed for the tech company, he had installed a fail-safe. If the fail-safe was triggered during the demo of the machine, the device would fall apart and fail to work. The department that had poured all its resources into funding his projects would more than likely be utterly bankrupt. They'd have to lean on the other sectors of the company, and they'd produce no more prototypes while they tried frantically to find funding. In the meantime, when word got out that the company had produced so many faulty products, the firm would be ruined. Investors would seek other companies in which to pour their money, and stockholders would sell as if their lives depended on it.

              And all for a single blurb of written script.

              David stared at the screen.

              He inserted a flash drive into the side of the machine and transferred the file. Then, he logged out and shut the computer off, staring at the device in his hands.

              For twenty years, he had worked to get to this point. He had sworn, as he watched his father's casket lower into the ground that he would go after the Mathers family with a vengeance for what they had done. Closing his eyes, he remembered stumbling blindly from the hallway after finding his father's body, wondering what on earth he was going to tell his mother and how their family was going to continue
.
On the kitchen table, he had found a handwritten note—he had almost missed it in his horror and grief—but the sight of his father's recognizable scrawl made him pause.

              In the twenty years since that day, he'd read the letter over and over. Every word of it was burned into his consciousness, and sometimes his father's voice spoke the words in his dreams.

             
Dear Miranda and David,

              By the time you discover this letter, I will be in a better place. A place where I am unable to further humiliate and burden you with my shortcomings. I have decided that it is better to take my own life than to see you continue to suffer. It was through my own pride that I brought our family to where it now stands, and I owe you an explanation for all that has happened.

              I'm sure you remember the year during which I worked for Mathers Incorporated. David, I know that time was the happiest of your life, and I apologize for the struggles I put you through both before and after it. Being hired by the up and coming Mathers company was what I had always dreamed of. Since I was a boy, I'd thought that one day my creations would improve the lives of people the world over, and Mathers tech department finally made it possible. I applied for the head position on a whim, but my designs impressed even Emerson Mathers himself. I was, of course, overjoyed to be hired to the position. The salary was enough to bring us out of poverty, and I could finally do what I loved in an environment that provided me with unlimited resources.             

              For a year, I couldn't have been happier, and it is only those memories that have driven me to rise from bed every morning for the past five years. Unfortunately, Emerson Mathers was not the man I thought he was. He is a cheat, a liar, and a thief. I discovered that he was stealing my designs and claiming them as his own while I was turning out the prototypes in the lab. Patents that should have been in my name were under that of Mathers Inc. During the course of that year, while I was blissfully unaware, he stole more than ten of my most coveted designs. This was a man I had lauded and trusted, a man who had promised me an equal share in everything we created together.

              When I confronted him, he fired me. He claimed that all the designs I had worked on in the lab were company property and refused to return even my own personal files to me. He issued a gag order that threatened what little funds we had left and you, whom I love more than life itself.

              Emerson Mathers took everything from me. No company would hire me once he'd spoken with them. He blackened my name and tarnished my career, and I lacked the strength to keep on fighting him. I gave up. I failed my family and I failed myself. Now, I can no longer design, and I can no longer face you, David and Miranda, for my lack of courage. I can no longer ask that you support me with long hours or endure my drunken rants. I love you so terribly much, and what I am doing now is the best thing I can do to free you the burden that is my failure. Without me, thrive and live without remorse.

              Your loving husband and father,

              Lester

             
Emerson Mathers deserved to lose everything he'd worked so hard to achieve. His company had been built on lies, and he'd ruined lives for his own personal gain. He was a selfish, rotten bastard and if anyone deserved to give him his due, it was David.

             
Why, then, was he hesitating?

             
It was at points like these that he wished that he had someone whom he could discuss such things. Certainly, he had Marshall; but, while his friend was fully aware of all the tragic events of his past and present, he was pretty sure that if he mentioned to the man that he had signed on at Mathers Incorporated to carry out some insane-sounding revenge scheme, there was a very good chance that Marshall would call the police. His friend was loyal, he supposed; but, he was also an upstanding member of New York's upper crust. Besides, with the way they'd spoken more and more seldom as the years had passed, David wasn't quite sure where their friendship stood at this particular juncture.

              How on earth would he ever be able to explain how he felt about Charlotte without being irreversibly judged?

             
Just then, his phone buzzed.

             
He glanced down to see Charlotte's name scrolling across the screen, and a vice clenched over his heart. For a moment, he just watched the device ring. When he finally picked it up, it was an effort to steady his voice enough to speak. “Hello?”

             
“Hey, are you still in the office?” Her voice was breathless, as if she'd just exerted herself. Instantly,
David pictured her spread out over her bed, naked, and writhing in pleasure beneath him. His stomach tightened, and his cock swelled, forcing him to swallow a groan of want.

              “Yeah....there are a few things I have to take care of. I'm looking over someone else’s designs.”

              “I see. Well, do you want to have a late dinner with me? I know this great restaurant up by my apartment. And after...”

              God, she was trying to kill him.

              He shouldn't. Things between them had already gone too far. He was trying to figure out a way to break things off with her even as he contemplated new ways they could hide their growing affections from his coworkers and Adeline, who seemed to be growing more suspicious by the day. “Sounds great.” He uttered the words without thinking. “I've, uh, got about fifteen more minutes of work here, but then I'll meet you. Where is it?”

              “Ninety-eight and Eighth.” She sounded positively ecstatic. “See you soon.”

              “See you.”

              As soon as he'd hung up, David dropped the phone to the desk in front of him. He glanced down at the USB in his hand for a moment before sliding it in his pocket. Who said he had to rush? He had what he needed now, so he could take his time. Wouldn't it be sweeter if he worked on more faulty material for the tech department? If Charlotte fell just a little more for him?

              His excuses sounded idiotic, even in his own head.

              However, for the moment, David let them be. Standing, he switched off his office light and left the room. He looked briefly into the lab, making sure that none of the cameras he'd been planted on the devices were broken. Then, he swiped out of the tech department.

              In the taxi on the way uptown, he thought about his mother. He had recently begun taking her to see a psychiatrist in midtown, and the man had only revealed to him what he already knew. Miranda Marscomb was profoundly depressed. A disorder like hers, the doctor had warned, would be very difficult to treat. She had been so sick for so long that it would take time and care to draw her from the dark place into which she had receded. So far, she had continued to remain silent during the sessions. David had given the doctor the picture from his living room, hoping that perhaps he would find some way to get his mother to say
something
about it
.