Because We Belong (Because You Are Mine #3)(67)
Author: Beth Kery

“It’ll be all right,” Ian said calmly. “I can get her a new passkey when I finish up here and delete her old code.”

“Clarisse, you really should be more careful,” Gerard chastised mildly as he stirred cream into his coffee. “As if Ian doesn’t have enough to be worried about with this press conference. Now our security has been breached.”

“It’s not all that bad. A lost key doesn’t equate to catastrophe. It can be rectified easily enough,” Ian said evenly. Francesca gave him a thankful glance for sparing Clarisse more shame. The maid looked miserable.

“It’ll all be taken care of, no harm done. Thank you all,” James said, including Clarisse in his glance, “for bringing the issue to our attention so it can be rectified.”

Francesca felt extremely awkward when the three women filed out of the room. She considered Clarisse a friend, and hadn’t enjoyed sitting at the table like one of her condemners.

Everyone continued eating in silence. Everyone but Ian, that is, Francesca realized. She slowed in chewing her toast when she saw the way Ian was sipping his coffee and studying Gerard through a narrow-eyed stare.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Gerard waited patiently in James’s private office. He knew James would be near Ian’s side for every second of the press conference, always ready to show absolute support for that apple of his eye, his tragic, perfect grandson. Gerard rolled his eyes at the thought. Gerard had used James’s office in the past and was very familiar with the venerable room. When he’d mentioned he had important business to attend to and needed to miss the press conference, James had insisted he use his office, just as Gerard had known he would.

Gerard certainly had crucial business to attend to today.

Brodsik was late. The man was almost as scattered as Clarisse, and twice as thick. Add a healthy dose of greed to that combination, and it was the recipe for volatility. He hated when he had to put even a small amount of trust in men such as Brodsik and Stern. Stern, he’d already disposed of soon after the criminal partners arrived in England. Brodsik, he needed. Brodsik had been the one Francesca saw in Chicago, after all. His was the face that Ian and she equated to threat. Stern, on the other hand, was a walking, talking loose end with absolutely no purpose whatsoever to Gerard. He’d had to go early on.

Gerard had been forced against his better judgment to hire the two men after Francesca had blocked his plans to financially gain control of Noble Enterprises in a hostile takeover. Once that had occurred, he’d known he had to find a way to bring Ian out of hiding, and what would galvanize his noble cousin more than a potential threat to his abandoned lover? True, it’d been a risk. Ian had left his fiancée, after all. Perhaps he wouldn’t care if Francesca were threatened? But no, Gerard had been correct. The moment Francesca had been in danger, he’d flown onto the scene, ready to play the role of tragic knight in shining armor.

He read Ian as effortlessly as a cheap novel.

It’d worked perfectly. The time to strike was now. He couldn’t very well get Ian in his sights if he remained mysteriously invisible. Ian was vulnerable. No one would be utterly shocked when he finally went over the edge and took Francesca with him.

He checked his watch and scowled. In the distance, he could hear the muted sound of Ian speaking in the microphone. The press conference had begun. His cousin was busy rallying the troops, showing the world the face of a confident, brilliant leader.

But Gerard knew the truth. The password he’d deciphered from the surveillance video had worked. He’d copied Ian’s files yesterday. All of them. He’d had the opportunity to begin to go through them last night—after he’d listened in on Ian and Francesca’s rousing lovemaking, that is. Damn Ian for continually fucking in places Gerard couldn’t determine beforehand, however. He’d repositioned one of the two cameras in Ian’s suite, no longer needing the one aimed on the desk and computer. He’d positioned the surveillance camera in a spot where he’d thought Ian had sported with Francesca last night. But as in all things, Ian had refused to cooperate with Gerard’s plans. He’d been forced to only listen as Francesca was paddled. Afterward, he’d masturbated as he’d eagerly listened to the sounds of her being sodomized. His climax had been so explosive after that, he hadn’t bothered to spy on the couple’s sexual activities any more. Instead, he’d plunged into Ian’s computer files.

That’s how he knew that Ian Noble was nowhere near to being the coolly aloof, in-control genius billionaire he pretended to be right now in front of those reporters’ cameras. He was, in fact, a man on the edge of madness, teetering after his mother’s death and the truth he’d discovered about the identity of his biological father.

Ian Noble, the son of a condemned rapist.

After Gerard had perused some of the volatile contents on Ian’s computer, he’d calmly altered his plans.

The mark of true brilliance, after all, was the ability to glean a person’s weakness and then add just the appropriate amount of pressure on that spot, so that the resulting break seemed inevitable in retrospect.

He’d learned that skill particularly well for the first time with his parents. He’d inadvertently learned that the make of car his parents drove had a weakness in the braking system. A school friend from Oxford who belonged to an influential family had let the industry secret out to another schoolmate, and Gerard had overheard. The news had not yet gone public. Once he’d had that information, all it had required was just a small mechanical nudge on Gerard’s part—not difficult as he’d often tinkered and worked with cars and motorcycles since he was a boy—and voila. His parents were dead. Not only was their fortune and property his to do with as he pleased, but he’d been primed for a very lucrative lawsuit against the car company. It had been almost laughably easy, but Gerard knew that patience had been required in waiting for that perfect opportunity to arise.

Patience was his forte.

Apply just the right amount of pressure in just the right spot: that was his motto. Never overdo it. Certainly Francesca and Ian were the weak points in this scenario, but Francesca had proved to be too independent and meddlesome, thwarting his plans both for seduction and with the Tyake acquisition. She’d blocked his subtle efforts to finally gain control of Noble Enterprises along with that infuriatingly smug Lucien, one of many wild cards for which Gerard hadn’t been able to entirely plan.