Page 115 of Open To Negotiation

She didn’t move, even as I glowered at her.

“I’m not working, Betty.” I decided that maybe if I ignored her, she would go away, so I went back to my laptop.

“You’re about to get a meeting request. Noah told me that if you don’t log in within three minutes, they are all getting on a plane and showing up here instead.”

I’d been avoiding all the men. I was a fucking hollow mess without Quinn. I had no clue how I used to operate without her, how I thought living alone had been better. She’d brought a light into my life and I didn’t know how to move forward without it.

The sweater I was in when I saw her last was in a bag in the corner of my office. Like a fucking creep, I sniffed it when I missed her since her jasmine and vanilla scent still clung to the fabric. I wouldn’t risk wearing it because I didn’t want the smell to dissipate which meant I was going to that corner at least once every hour. I’d ordered her perfume, but it didn’t smell the same without her.

“I’ll ground all our planes,” I muttered as Betty snorted. I paused and looked up at her smirk.

“Noah has already contacted the pilot, they are waiting for his word on the tarmac in Calgary, he said to tell you that you won’t be able to stop them.”

“Nosey bastards.” I tilted my head up at the ceiling and took a few deep breaths.

I actually needed their help. Will could be useful, and Jaxson would make ten times more progress on this than me. And the plan I was forming to take out my father was aggressive, and it would be easier with them behind me.

“You’ve got two minutes until they’ll be on the call, Mr. Knight.” Betty tapped the doorframe twice and then pulled my door closed.

I waited as long as possible before I opened my out-of-control inbox, I ignored everything other than the link from Noah. As soon as I joined, send the video to the large TV behind me and turned to face the mounted camera, I was looking at the boardroom of our Calgary office. All my friends were there, serious looks on their faces and a lot of crossed arms.

“You look rough,” Noah commented first.

“I think he forgot what a razor is,” Oli muttered to Will, but we could all hear him.

“Are you ready to talk or are you going to keep avoiding us?” Asher’s grumbly voice silenced everyone else.

Sighing, I leaned forward. “I fucked up and I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start from when you lost your mind and ended things with Quinn,” Noah replied with a frown on his face. The man wasn’t angry very often but I was getting it from him now. It was deserved.

“I met with Warren.” All the men leaned forward.

“What the fuck did he want?” Asher said, his frown got deeper, if that was even possible. Asher might have hated Warren more than me.

When my mum got pregnant, he’d thrown money at her to ‘deal with the problem.’ She hadn’t told me that of course, she’d worked hard to make sure I never felt unwanted, keeping the uglier side of my father from me. But Jane had told Asher, Noah, and I one night when we’d been home for the holidays and she’d had one too many glasses of wine.

“He thought we were looking at opening an office in New York.”

Jaxson shook his head. “That location was on a list of fifteen cities that we were making inquires in.”

“And there is a rumor every week that we’re looking at expanding. What got his knickers in a twist this time?” Will asked.

“Did he see the Forbes article?” Oli smirked as he asked.

There had been a big Forbes article on all of us that was published a month back, it highlighted the opening of our North American office and basically boasted about our success.

Quinn had read it and snorted at the comments online about how our looks were just a cherry on top of our achievements and wouldn’t stop laughing at how uncomfortable Asher and I had looked.

The memory of that moment, her sitting at the island as I scrambled us some eggs, her in my sweater, hair piled on her head and an easy smile on her face, had my chest aching. I rubbed the spot to try and lessen my discomfort. “I don’t know, he didn’t mention it.”

I then told them all about our meeting. About how Warren had looked into Quinn and then into her dad. I told them what her father had done, how he’d been manipulating Quinn for years. I outlined the threats Warren had made against her, my own pulse picked up with my anger as I told them everything.

When I was done, I looked at all the men, their anger matching my own as they let everything sink in.

“I’d made myself a promise,” I ground out after the heavy silence, “to make sure nothing ever upset her. I was in a corner with no good choice and I got tunnel vision. Anything I chose would upset her, but I went with what I thought was best, because her safety needed to come first and that was all I could think about.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you broke up with Quinn,” Noah said after a beat.