Lauren (Silicon Valley Billionaires 1)

We pulled up to a sleek-looking Japanese restaurant on First Street. I texted Timmy, who was in the car behind us, to come sit in the bar and keep an eye out.

“Do you have a guy with you?”

Gabe nodded. “He’s out here, somewhere.”

“Doing what?”

“Surveillance.” He shrugged. “Armed surveillance.”

I grimaced as the valet opened my car door. “This is getting out of control.”

“No.” Gabe came around the front of the Spyder and laced his fingers through mine. “This is already out of control.”

We sat in the restaurant, and I listlessly read the menu. Between thinking about being naked in Gabe’s arms again and worrying about Clive Warren, I had no appetite.

Gabe watched me. “You have to eat.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Is that a command? I thought we were framing those as requests.”

“You don’t want me to pull rank on you, do you?” He grinned at me. “I could withhold things from you. Things you seem to like.”

I went right back to the menu. “I’m ordering, I’m ordering.”

“Did you meet with your lawyers?”

“Yes. And by the way—they’ve approved Dynamica’s financials. They’re drafting up the partnership agreement.”

“Excellent. Partner.” He grinned at me, then turned serious. “Did you catch them up to speed on everything else?”

I nodded, groaning. “They were pissed.”

“Do you blame them? You’ve been withholding a lot of crucial information.”

“No, I don’t blame them.”

My personal attorney, Bethany O’Donnell, had sat in on the meeting this afternoon. She’d practically ripped my head off after I divulged everything that had happened with Clive over the past few weeks.

“What was their position?”

“They said that I could absolutely have Clive arrested for willful and malicious misappropriation of my intellectual property. With my testimony, the chip, and what we’ve uncovered from his system, there’s plenty of proof. Although the stuff I hacked from him could get me into trouble. The good news is, if I went after him in federal court, I wouldn’t necessarily have to expose my technology in filings…”

“So are you going to do it?”

“I don’t know.” I swirled the ice around in my water glass. “We talked about it for hours. The problem is, even though Clive is clearly guilty, he’s not my ultimate opponent anymore. That’s whoever he sold it to in China—and Clive is my only link to them right now.”

“So you want him out of jail. Conducting business as usual.” Gabe didn’t sound happy about it.

I shrugged, avoiding his piercing gaze for the moment. “My team said that enforcing trade secret protection against non-U.S. companies can be difficult. So we can try to go after them, but it could take a long time. And we don’t even know who ‘they’ are yet.”

“I think I have an idea.” Gabe scrubbed a hand across his face. “I had my technology expert review the files you sent me. He did some digging.”

When I’d left the office, Leo still hadn’t found out who the Chinese email address belonged to. “Did he find anything?”

“The email address belongs to a Chinese woman who works in Shenzhen. She’s an executive assistant.”

My heart started pounding. “Do you know who she is?”

He shook his head. “But I know where she works and who she works for. She’s the assistant to Li Na Zhao, the CEO of Jiàn Innovations, which is the most aggressively growing healthcare deliverable company in China.”