Why?
He shook off his perplexity as he pressed his thumb pad to the sensor in his office and tapped the screen, bringing up the security report he’d ignored earlier.
He swore aloud as the contents became clear.
Apparently the experts were right. He was a security genius, if late to the party this once. The myriad details that his gatekeeper and even his own eyes had missed had been refined by his closed circuit camera and proprietary software, filtered against online content, then tagged to warn him of an attack even more insidious than the one he’d suffered all those years ago.
A handful of matches had come up. He glanced through them, stomach knotting.
The surname comparison could be dismissed as coincidental. Melodie had given his guard the name Parnell, which had been tagged to Parnell-Gautier. Two and a half decades ago, a model named Patience Parnell had hyphenated to Parnell-Gautier when she married.
He flicked to a dated glamor shot from a defunct fashion magazine. Patience stared at him, young and nubile, her gamine face bearing a striking resemblance to Melodie’s big eyes and wide mouth. And there she was holding a baby girl named Charmaine. Not Melodie, but the date would put the baby in her early twenties today, precisely the age Melodie appeared to be.
Roman had met Patience once, very briefly, he recalled now. But he’d never considered her a direct threat because she’d gone into some kind of medical care several years ago.
His war, Roman had always believed, was with Anton Gautier and Anton’s father, Garner Gautier. Aside from one recent photograph, the daughter hadn’t been linked publically to either man since childhood.
He studied the photograph from a newsfeed dated two months ago. Melodie’s profile from her approach in the taxi today had been set against the profile in the news piece where a backlit woman, wearing a black hat with a netted veil, stood next to her American senator father as he bowed his head over a casket. Behind them stood Anton. The caption mentioned that Patience Parnell-Gautier was survived by her loving husband, stepson and daughter, Charmaine M. Parnell-Gautier.
How vile and just like Gautier to send his second spawn into Roman’s house like this. To use his PA’s mother to infiltrate his home.
He immediately dismissed any thought that Ingrid could be in on the scheme. She’d proved her loyalty again and again over the years. And it had been his idea to host the wedding, not hers. High-society circles were small and tight. She had connections he didn’t. He wouldn’t care about being accepted at that level if it weren’t for the fact that it was the one area the Gautiers had an advantage on him. He’d volunteered his home to even the playing field.
What he couldn’t understand was how Melodie had captivated him to the point that he’d ignored the security alert rather than read it and order her off his property. He wasn’t so uncivilized he’d have had her thrown out the way he’d been physically expelled from her father’s campaign office twelve years ago. Battered and kicked so badly he could barely walk away. Anton had been the thief, but Garner had had the power to turn it around and call Roman the criminal. He’d had the power to ruin Roman, which he had.
A red haze of fury rose with the recollection. He would not allow the Gautiers to play him again. Rage urged him to hurt them, deeply, for daring to try.
Despite being a man who actively sublimated everything resembling feelings, he found himself able to taste delicious vengeance on the tip of his tongue. He’d been longing to get back at this family for years, biding his time, wanting to first overtake Gautier Enterprises in the arena that would cause them the most discomfort: financial.
For years, their two companies had been neck and neck in a two-horse race, both improving on the same software that he, Roman, originally had written and that Anton had convinced him his father would back. Instead, the men had stolen his product, finished it, then made a mint while Roman had scraped by for another five years, rebuilding everything he’d lost and finally entering the marketplace so far behind them he’d despaired of ever catching up.
Finally, early last year, he had begun to see parity. It wasn’t enough. Not for him. He’d risked everything and had thrown all his resources behind completely reengineered software. The gamble had paid off. Corporations were dropping the dated Gautier knockoff and stampeding to Roman’s new, far superior product.
Gautier’s bottom line had to be feeling the pinch by now. It followed that they would send in a scout, thinking to once again steal what they wanted and step back into the top position.
Like hell.
Roman wasn’t just going to win this time. He would send a message to the Gautiers they would never forget. He would crush them into nothing, starting by flattening their emissary without a shred of mercy.