This Cruel Love

Dennis shook his head and scratched his beard. “This one is a bit of a mystery to me. I don’t know that much about Kyle. Sure, his initial checks were fine when he started working here, but he could be up to anything really.”

So far, my money was on Kyle, but there was one more suspect to go.

“Okay, who’s number three?” I asked.

“You won’t like this one.” Cill took a deep breath and moved the CCTV footage to the next clip he wanted to show me. He froze the image and we all groaned. Steve.

My head barman, Steve, had worked for me for years. He wasn’t the most likeable guy in the world, but he was good at his job, so I kept him on. Trouble was, he wasn’t popular with any of the staff. They all hated him. I’d had to give him numerous warnings about his conduct towards other members of staff over the years. He had an uncanny knack of rubbing people up the wrong way. Did that make him the spy though? Could he have done this? And if he did, then why? I honestly didn’t have a clue.

“Jax, if I was a betting man, I’d be putting my money on Kyle or Steve at this point. But give me a little longer. I have a few more things I need to look into first. I have a hacker mate of mine coming over in a bit to help me out.”

“You’ve got two hours. After that, I’m speaking to this Kyle and then Steve myself, and trust me, it won’t be pretty.”

I made a few more calls to some of my associates, just to see if anyone had heard about Kyle Connors or Steve. In my world, secrets didn’t stay secret for very long. Unfortunately, I didn’t uncover anything that would help our investigation.

I was just getting up from my desk to make a start on interrogating the three ‘suspects’, when my door opened, and Cill stormed in without knocking. Another guy followed him in, looking as if my office was the last place he wanted to be.

“Jax, this is Paul. What he doesn’t know about technology isn’t worth knowing.”

I nodded over at Paul as he shuffled nervously on the spot.

“We managed to dig a little deeper,” Cill went on. “And what we found… well, let’s just say Ed’s got his grubby little hands all over this. Sorry, mate.”

Paul laid his laptop on my desk and started clicking onto something to prove Cill’s point.

“We accessed Steve’s bank account and mobile phone records. There’s numerous calls to a number registered to Ed. He never was very good at covering his tracks, was he?”

Ed never cared about covering anything, he didn’t need to. Most people avoided him like the plague, and he just didn’t give a fuck.

“Steve’s a dead man,” I growled through my teeth, barely keeping myself in check.

“As for the banking records, they show a deposit of twenty-five grand into Steve’s account seven days ago, and another twenty-five grand went in yesterday. So… are you gonna rip his head off, or shall I?”

I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to teach that fucker a lesson.

“He’s all mine. Where is he?” I grabbed my keys, expecting to drive to Steve’s apartment for the showdown.

“He’s downstairs doing a stock take.”

“You’re fucking joking? He’s still come into work? After shafting us like that? He’s got some fucking nerve.” I slammed my keys back down on the desk. “Bring him up.”

Minutes later, Cill pushed a stumbling Steve into the room.

“Dennis, close the door and wait outside,” I asked, but I let Cill stay in for this one.

Steve glanced meekly at both of us. He had zero clue why he’d been called up here. I had to hand it to him, the guy had developed a pretty mean poker face.

“Shall I sit down?” He pointed towards the chair opposite mine, his hand trembling as he did, giving away the nerves he was so expert at hiding from his face.

“Don’t bother, you won’t be staying long,” I bit back, and walked around my desk to lean against the front of it. I gripped the edge of the desk hard, to stop from launching myself on the weasel and teaching him a fucking lesson.

There was a deathly silence emanating around the room, and Steve’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed down his fear, and kept his eyes level and trained on me.

“Got something you wanna share with us, Stevie boy?”

Steve turned to face Cill, the mask of innocence dropping slightly as I sensed he was about to bite back. Then he turned back to me, and in his fake-ass, meek and mild way, he answered. “I don’t know what you mean. Have I done something wrong?”

“I don’t know, Steve? Have you? Can you honestly stand here in front of me and lie to my face? Tell me you haven’t royally fucked me over? Come on, mate. You’ve worked here for years. Is this all you’ve got?”