Page 62 of Stuck

“No, you don’t,” he said with icy authority.

I halted mid-reach for my belongings and straightened again. “Pardon?”

“Until the lawyers have determined whether you are a risk to company security, you will not be permitted in the office. Take your things and go home. I have a call with William Lucas in an hour. I’ll be discussing your contract with him then.”

I was instantly fuming again, the vehemence of the emotion making it impossible to contain my tears. I swiped at them uselessly, but the damned things kept on falling. “You’re going to try and get me fired from Lucas GreenTech? You know I need my job to support my dad.”

It was a real concern, because even once Bingley had returned from Paris and straightened all this out, it might be too late to save my position. William Lucas was no pushover—if he thought I’d caused trouble with the owner of the Pemberley Group, he’d have me off this project, perhaps off every project, before I could blink.

“I imagine you do, now that you won’t have the money you were planning to make with Wickham,” Darcy replied coldly.

“How dare you! I am not⁠—”

“Don’t make me call security, Miss Bennet. Leave now, and leave quietly.”

I stared at him, tears still cascading down my cheeks and my chest heaving with rage. I couldn’t reconcile the man who’d sat with me for hours in A&E on Friday—the man I’d thought I was beginning to have some really big feelings for—with this vicious arsehole. How could he believe me capable of such awful things? Or George, for that matter! Sure, he was flaky and selfish, but he wasn’t that bad. I looked forward to Darcy’s formal apology when he found out how wrong he was on both counts. Grabbing my things from the floor, I crossed to the door and left without another word.

27

DARCY

“I’m just saying, I think you’ve made a mistake. There’s no way Elizabeth would do something like this. She loves this job, and she’s loyal to the team.”

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to remain calm. Polanski had been in my office, repeating this same sentiment in varying ways for the last ten minutes. He’d taken most of the day to muster the courage to come and fight in Elizabeth’s corner, but now that he was here, he was stubbornly refusing to back down.

“There is more to this than you know.” I wasn’t going to divulge the details of Bingley’s relationship with Elizabeth to his staff. I also hadn’t revealed her confession, because although it had sealed her fate, I would still give her the benefit of a fair and thorough investigation before all her colleagues discovered the truth.

Polanski shook his head, undeterred. “You do know she spent hours of her own spare time reading Jerry Wilson’s paper, cross-checked every possible connection to the patent, researched all his references, then handed it to me in an annotated dossier, all to make sure it was safe for him to publish during the media blackout? Why would she do that if she was trying to screw us over?”

Looking for other secrets to sell? I didn’t say it aloud. I didn’t know why she’d done it. If you’d asked me on Friday, I’d have said it was because being kind to people was baked into her DNA. Today, I was as stumped by this behaviour as I was by everything else she’d done. None of it made any sense.

“You need to let the lawyers do their job, Polanski. If Miss Bennet has done nothing wrong, she will be able to return to work.” I gestured to the door. “Now, please, it’s late. Go home to your family.”

He hesitated for a moment longer, exhaled loudly, shook his head again, and left. I let out a heavy breath of my own and cracked my neck. It had been a painfully long day. Apart from one email, sent immediately after his meeting to give me the troubling news that it hadn’t gone as planned, Bingley had been completely incommunicado. I didn’t know how likely it was that Elizabeth would have tried to reach out to him, or whether his radio silence was related, but I’d given up trying to call him. The conversation we needed to have would be better in person anyway. But now he was late for our arranged catch-up, and my apprehension was stretched taut.

I walked to my desk and picked up my phone to check for messages. There were none. I was expecting calls from people left, right, and centre—my lawyer, Vertex’s lawyers, King Ventures’ lawyers, Henderson, Bingley…

Somewhere at the back of my mind was a craving to see the screen light up with a message from Elizabeth. Be it with an apology or more denials, part of me wanted to know she was all right. She must be scared about what would happen now. I knew she was upset. Those damned tears… But she didn’t deserve my concern, and I was doing everything I could to ignore the invasive yearning.

I’m assuming you know, then?

Her cold, indifferent admission had felt like a knife to the gut. I couldn’t ignore my bone-deep disappointment at discovering who and what she really was. Call me crazy, because she was never mine to begin with, but finding out the woman I’d come to think so highly of was a con artist, in league with George Wickham of all people, was devastating. It ought to make it easier to get over her, but all I felt at the moment was stupid. Tricked into caring deeply about a person who’d never existed and idiotically grieving for the loss of her, because the Elizabeth I thought I knew had been the most incredible woman I’d ever met.

My phone buzzed, and my heart skittered, but it was only a message from my COO.

No reported concerns of suspicious activity. Wickham’s name hasn’t come up anywhere. Will continue to make discreet enquiries, but looks as though his focus is outside of the Pemberley Group this time

I couldn’t fully relax—it was too soon to rule anything out—but it was at least not bad news. Besides, Henderson was well acquainted with the trouble Wickham could cause and wouldn’t rest until he was certain there was no threat.

My lawyers hadn’t found anything yet either. They’d confirmed that Wickham worked for Vertex, what his remit was, and whom he reported to, but deeper investigations would be more delicate and take longer to set in motion, especially at such a crucial stage of negotiations.

I looked at my phone again. I could call Elizabeth, try one more time to get a full confession out of her. Ask her whether she was okay.

“Damn it!”

I wished I could stop thinking about how her hands had started to shake when I told her I’d be talking to Lucas. I hadn’t called him yet—I’d need something far more concrete before I opened that can of worms—but I’d threatened it to try and get Elizabeth to divulge what information she’d passed to Wickham.

It hadn’t worked, and I’d regretted the tactic the moment her defiance crumbled into tears. The memory of it sat heavily in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t an arsehole; I didn’t want to get her sacked. Then again, I didn’t want to be the victim of her hustle either.