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.