Page 17 of Holding On

“I’m just looking for the right way to say something.”

Now he has my full attention. “Go on then, out with it.” I put my feet down to stop the chair’s rocking movement.

Walker holds up a hand in defense. “If I could just flat out say things, I would, and you know it.” At times, Walker’s job involves coming across information that he has to decide how to navigate while upholding his oath to the badge. He hums, apparently concluding how to approach whatever it is. “When was the last time you dealt with Kane Daughtry?”

What the hell?

I raise an eyebrow. “Are you asking as my future brother-in-law or as an FBI Agent?”

He shrugs. “For this conversation, let’s assume they are one in the same.” Because they are.

“I don’t directly deal with the trash; it’s a perk of being a billionaire with teams of people to deal with that shit. So, I guess there’s a chance that one of my legal representatives has dealt with him, but I haven’t talked to him directly in … a year? Maybe longer? Why?”

Walker hums again and takes another drink from his beer. “I just wonder what he’s been up to lately. Maybe Liam knows the answer to that … or could find out.” Walker slaps my knee and gets up to leave. But I know Walker, and while that answer—and entire conversation—sounded vague, he just told me something without telling me anything.

I stand, grab a bottle of water, and search the lawn for my pyro-loving brothers, not that they’re hard to find if I just wait for the next boom to light up the sky. I walk through the small crowd of our family and friends spread out on blankets and in lawn chairs across the backyard, enjoying the show. I say hello to a few familiar faces and make my way closer to my brothers. Liam looks up as I approach and I lean my head to the side. I don’t need to get closer to ask him to come talk to me; he says something to Ryan and Finn who nod and take some kind of remote from his hands.

I keep walking away from the crowd and Liam catches up to me. Handing him the water, I watch whatever five-hundred-dollar explosive Finn just blew up into the night sky. “What’s up?” Liam asks before taking a drink of water. I knew he wouldn’t want to drink alcohol with the amount of explosives they’re lighting tonight.

“I just had an interesting plausible deniability conversation with Walker.” We started using that term whenever there was a conversation that could put Walker in a predicament or split his loyalties between the badge and the people he cares about. We all respect him too much to ever put him in a challenging position; at least we would never intentionally do that to him.

“Oh, yeah? Anything interesting?” Liam almost sounds bored in his response, but I know I have his full attention.

“He asked when the last time I saw Kane Daughtry was. Do you still have surveillance on him?”

Liam shakes his head. “Not since the last lawsuit was settled. I don’t even know if you have any current litigation against the guy right now, but I’m sure you will again in the future because the asshole is a cockroach. Why, did something happen?”

“I feel like something happened that I need to be aware of, or maybe Kane is up to something I should know about. Any clue about any of that?”

“Not off the top of my head, but I can find out.” Liam takes another drink as a very large explosion goes off, snapping both of our heads to Ryan and Finn, but relaxing when we hear laughter. “Those morons. I told them to press one button at a time on the remote.”

“You know it had to be Finn that pressed more than one button. That really shouldn’t surprise you.” Finn is the youngest of the four brothers and loves to do anything fun, and if it’s a boring task, he will do what he can to make it as fun as possible.

“Of course, it was Finn. He’s like a child,” Liam says but grins. Finn is a good balance to the rest of the brothers who tend to all take our own selves a little too seriously sometimes.

“So, Kane … can you look into it? Just let me know if there’s anything I need to be aware of?”

Liam tilts his head. “Do you want him followed again?”

I shake my head. “No, I don’t think it’s at that point. I just want to be aware if there’s anything I need to know.”

Kane Daughtry is a walking billboard for what it looks like to have a Napoleon complex. He has an enormous ego without the goods to back it up. Wells and I hired him at Lux in a senior vice president role within our technology and innovation division. He was very convincing that he knew his shit, but I’m still pissed we ever believed it. Somehow, Kane got it in his head that he was as essential to Lux as Wells and myself and thought we were equals in all areas of life, or at least he should’ve been entitled to whatever we had.

Kane was employed at Lux for three years before we fired him based on suspicion of corporate espionage. He was heavily involved in a classified project that would eventually evolve into what our customers know as the cloud-based AI system Lux uses called Stella, but prior to launch, the AI program was referred to internally as Project Andromeda. Less than three weeks before the patent filing, one of our competitors announced a nearly identical product. Spectate’s program Meteor even had the same user-interface, down to the font selection. An internal investigation all pointed to Kane’s involvement, and interviews with the research and development staff only confirmed that Kane was asking questions outside of his scope of work. His computer accessed files he shouldn’t have, and the final nail for me, personally, was when Liam confirmed through questionably attained video footage that Kane had dinner with the CEO of Spectate six months before they announced Zeus, and he would text with him on an almost daily basis. I didn’t need to share where that information came from because we didn’t need to prove it; our suspicions were enough to fire for cause. But the man didn’t go quietly into the night.

We wouldn’t have ever commented publicly about it had he not forced our hand.

The guy is a press whore and will do anything for attention, regardless if it’s good or bad press. I don’t even know how many frivolous lawsuits we’ve dealt with because of him, and that’s intentional—I told my legal team I only want to be aware if something is actually important or impacts something or someone directly in my life.

One of our company’s attorneys, Daphne Cromwell, initially assisted Lux with European legal issues out of our New York offices, but over the years, Wells and I both kept turning to her for advice in other areas. Technically, she’s still in charge of any European legal issues, but she advises us in a general counsel role more often than not. After dealing with Kane for the third time, even the unflappable Daphne was exasperated by the man.

Daphne

Kane Daughtry had the audacity to ask me out as we left court. How did you ever put up with that insufferable twat? That wanker thinks the sun shines out of his arse!

Wells

Oh? Please do share your response with the class.