Chapter 3 - The Enemy Within
The silence in the hotel suite felt heavier than the one in the wedding ballroom.
""Zoe?"" Meredith whispered, staring at the screen as if the name might magically change if she looked at it long enough. ""Our operations director? The person who has managed our office budgets for four years? Who sits three seats away from me at every staff meeting?""
""The same Zoe who nearly spit out her coffee when I complained about breakfast pancakes on Thursday,"" I said grimly, scrolling further down the document. ""Look at the timestamps on these fund transfers. She’s been leaking our quarterly projections to Preston’s firm since February. Every time we pitched a restaurant group or a boutique hotel, Preston already knew our exact baseline pricing.""
Meredith stood up abruptly, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the glittering lights of downtown Providence in the distance. Her hands were clenched into tight fists at her sides. For a woman who was always completely in control, the betrayal seemed to hit a nerve far deeper than her breakup with Preston ever had.
""I trusted her,"" Meredith said, her voice dangerously quiet. ""When her mother was sick last year, I advanced her three months of salary without making her file the paperwork. When she wanted to restructure the creative department, I gave her complete autonomy.""
""People don't betray you because you're a bad boss, Meredith,"" I said, walking over to stand beside her. I didn't touch her, but I kept my shoulder close enough for her to feel my presence. ""They do it because they think they can get away with it, or because someone dangled a number in front of them that looked bigger than loyalty.""
She turned her head to look at me, her gray-green eyes reflecting the city lights. ""What do we do on Monday morning?""
""We don't panic,"" I said. ""We don't fire her in the office where she can wipe the company servers before security escorts her out. We lock her administrative credentials right now, tonight, before she realizes we accessed the drive.""
Meredith blinked, a spark of her fierce operational brilliance reigniting in her eyes. ""You're right. If we lock her out of the master cloud storage before she logs in on Monday, she won't be able to destroy the backup audit trails.""
She rushed back to her laptop, her fingers moving with lightning speed. Within ten minutes, Zoe’s administrative profile was completely revoked, and every transaction log was duplicated and uploaded to a secure, off-site encrypted vault that only the two of us could access.
As the final progress bar clicked to 100%, Meredith let out a long, shuddering breath and leaned back in her chair.
""Well,"" she said dryly, looking up at me. ""That definitely ruins the Monday morning marketing meeting.""
""I think we can officially cancel the discussion about blueberry pancakes,"" I smiled.
She looked up at me for a long moment, the tension of the past forty-eight hours finally beginning to dissolve from her shoulders. The humor returned to her eyes, mixed with something much warmer, much softer.
""You know, Jonah,"" she said softly. ""When I asked you to be my fake boyfriend for this wedding, I expected you to wear a tux, hold my hand during dinner, and look vaguely disapproving when Preston tried to make small talk.""
""And instead?""
""Instead, you helped me uncover corporate espionage, exposed a traitor in my own office, and kissed me so thoroughly I forgot my own middle name."" She stood up slowly, closing the distance between us until she was standing right in front of me. ""I think I underpaid you.""
""Your salary structure is very generous, boss,"" I murmured, my gaze dropping to her lips. ""Though a promotion might be in order.""
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""Let's get through Monday morning first,"" she whispered, rising onto her tiptoes.
When her lips met mine this time, there was no pretense left. No rules, no boundaries, no corporate hierarchy. Just two people standing in the wreckage of a ruined wedding weekend, realizing that the best part of their lives had been hiding right in front of them the entire time.
