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Chapter
Eighteen

Kane
was so busy the first week that he and Julianne barely had time to exchange a
quick kiss in the mornings. There were tux fittings and last minute details to
work out for the rehearsal dinner, not to mention all the things going on back
at the office that were blowing up in his absence.

Ace
didn’t want a traditional stag party, and had instead opted for an afternoon
get-together with the other Weathermen, two days before the wedding. Harper and
her bridesmaids, plus Liane, Angela, and Julianne, spent time together back at
the apartment. After the expected ribbing of Ace one last time from his
friends, the talk turned to Emmett’s and Dominic’s upcoming weddings.

“
I have an announcement,” said Emmett, “Dominic and I
had the same wedding dates set. When we realized that, Liane and I pushed ours
up six months.”

Everyone
started talking at once until Barclay whistled loudly and they stopped.

“
That’s right,” said Emmett. “In just six short months
I expect to see all of you in
SouthEast
for the next
wedding. Then six months after that, we’re on our way to
CentralWest
for Dominic’s and Angela’s wedding.”

“
I hope this trend doesn’t continue,” said Blaine, the
ever-present smirk on his face. “A wedding every six months might kill me.”

“
By the time you get around to having one,” said
Viggo
, “you’ll have one foot in the grave anyway, so don’t
worry about it.”

The
men laughed. Of the twelve, Blaine was definitely the one they all agreed would
never settle down. “Seriously, though,” said Kane, “tell us the truth, you
three. Are you happy? I mean really happy? Is this everything you had hoped it
would be?”

“
Absolutely,” said Emmett.

“
It’s better than that,” said Dominic.

“
I have no regrets,” said Ace. “Harper is the woman
I’ve waited for.”

Emmett
raised his glass. “To our women. They bring us to our knees … and sometimes we
manage to get them on theirs.” Raucous laughter filled the room. “But at the
end of the day, they hold our hearts and our lives in their hands, and they
know it. Boy, do they know it!”

More
laughter, and then everyone clinked glasses and drank a toast.

Dominic
eyed Kane with a thoughtful expression. “I think our friend needs a more
drawn-out answer.”

“
It would help.”

Dominic
leaned forward. “There isn’t anyone else I could have trusted enough to spend
the rest of my life with. I’m not talking about the friendship we each have
with the others. I’m talking about baring your soul to someone. I didn’t know I
could love someone that much until I looked into Angela’s eyes for the first
time.”

“I
can vouch for that,” said
Viggo
. He also lived in
CentralWest
, and Kane knew he and Dominic were very close.
“Dominic is a changed man. He’s a better person.”

“
That’s how I feel, too,” said Emmett. “Liane’s
presence in my life opened my eyes to a whole new dimension. I’m complete with
her. That’s the best way I can describe the feeling.”

“
Harper made me a better person, no doubt about it,”
said Ace. “I was such a smug bastard.”

“
You’re still a smug bastard,” said Blaine, “but now
you confine that to your business instead of your women.”

There
were some chuckles, but Kane knew Blaine was teasing Ace. He’d seen the changes
in Ace, Emmett, and Dominic for himself these past few months. They were just
as ruthless and efficient in their work, but they no longer drifted from woman
to woman, searching for something to fill the loneliness. They were whole men,
and he wanted the same thing. He wanted to spend his life with Julianne.

He
hadn’t stopped thinking about her all these years, and being with her now was
still like living a dream. He wanted this all the time, every single day. It
didn’t matter what his father or anyone else in his family thought. He’d deal
with it, the same way he’d been dealing with stressful, terrifying situations
since the one that changed his life forever at the tender age of seven.

As
the talk in the room turned toward work, Kane realized he’d never shared the
events of that day with Julianne. He made a mental note to do so later tonight.
It was important that she know everything about him before he asked her to make
a life-changing decision.

“
Have you heard anything further about Isabelle
Sharpe?” asked Grayson. Grayson Jensen lived in
NorthWest
,
and owned Jensen Software and Web Development. Between his company and the
division of Radcliffe Enterprises that Emmett presided over, they had the
entire USA market share in their field.

Grayson’s
question drew Kane out of his reverie. “As a matter of fact, I have. My emails
have been blowing up over the past forty-eight hours.” Kane took out his phone
and scrolled to the folder he’d saved the latest ones in. When he returned to
the apartment later, he’d need to catch up on work, but not until after he and
Julianne discussed their future. Kane wasn’t going to wait any longer.

“
You all know my father and I decided to sit on
Isabelle for a while and watch her, but I can no longer do that. I was alerted
by HR two mornings ago that Isabelle attempted to access the system our hacker
team uses, which is a great big major company violation.”

“
Whoa,” said Addison. “That’s a step up from simply
telling Julianne about the new teams.”

Kane
had told each of the Weathermen what had happened with Julianne and Isabelle,
without revealing anything of a personal nature between him and Julianne. He’d
also told them what he and his father had discussed, again without adding the
part about his father’s feelings toward Julianne. They all knew his father well
enough to guess the truth.

“
Yes, it is. She never would have made it into the
system, but now I have an excuse to fire her that won’t cast suspicions on
Julianne. Part of the reason I kept her on was so that she would never suspect
Julianne had named her as a source.”

“
Was it worth keeping her on all these weeks?” asked
Blaine. “Did she divulge anything else, or bring you closer to more names of
hackers?”

“
No, but HR did find something very interesting when
they hauled her ass into the department to explain what she’d done and why.” He
glanced around the room, enjoying the expectant looks on their faces. Within
this group, it was a rare moment when any of them got the jump on everyone at
the same time. He wanted to savor this for a second or two. “She tried to hack
in with the intention of gathering names.”

“
Was she going to pass the names to reporters?” asked
Barclay.

Kane
shook his head. “Nope. Giving Julianne that information wasn’t connected to
this. Isabelle had used Olivia as a reference because they’d been former
classmates in graduate school, but HR never got that far down the list so
Olivia didn’t know she’d been listed as a reference, or that Isabelle was
working for me until after Isabelle was hired.”

“
Did Isabelle know Olivia had married Rob?” asked
Addison.

“
I’m not sure. She listed Olivia under her maiden name,
and the company she supposedly worked at was fake. Whether Isabelle knew this
or not isn’t something we found out, but we did get something useful before she
was escorted off the property by security.”

Kane
shifted his weight so he could see each of their faces. He was enjoying this.
“Olivia and Isabelle did their graduate work together at
NorthEast
University, and of course you all know that Olivia is now Rob Marin’s wife.
Apparently, Isabelle and Olivia knew each other
quite
well in college, because there was an incident during their
second year of grad school that was filmed onto a disc, and Isabelle does not
want it splashed all over the Internet.”

“
What happened?” asked Damien, his dark eyes gleaming.

“
Olivia filmed Isabelle having sex with one of their
professors. All three were drunk, and up until Olivia contacted her, Isabelle
thought the disc had been destroyed years ago. She was wrong. Olivia and Rob
used the threat of that amateur porn movie to blackmail Isabelle. They wanted
her to find information on the names of hackers we all had collected.
Isabelle’s intention was to start with the hacker system and go as far as breaking
into the database Liane built.”

“
So hang on,” said Atticus. “Let me make sure I
understand this. We don’t know if Isabelle and Olivia kept in touch after
college, so her listing Olivia under her maiden name, and at a company which
does not exist, as a reference on her app for your company could have merely
been a coincidence?”

Kane
nodded. “Yes. Isabelle told HR she didn’t contact Olivia until after she
started working for me.”

“
Why did she contact her at all?” asked Atticus.

“
She told HR she called Olivia to ask if we had
contacted her for a reference, but Olivia told her they had not. Once Olivia
knew where Isabelle was working, she and Rob tried to blackmail her.”

“
Which means that Rob and Olivia also know about the
teams searching for IP addresses and machine IDs,” said Dominic.

Emmett
shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. No one will gain access to that database or
to the system the teams use. Liane is a firewall expert. That’s why I hired her
to build that database and help us design the system. Both are completely
hidden.”

“
We know that,” said Kane, “but Isabelle, Olivia, and
Rob don’t. It’s a moot point now. Isabelle is canned, and when my PR people get
done behind the scenes, no one will hire her to scrub toilets, let alone work
in IT.”

“
What else did she tell you about Olivia and Rob?”
asked Oliver. “Anything we can use?”

He
shook his head. “I don’t think she knows anything else. As I said, she only
used Olivia’s name as a reference because they had classes together and had
once been close friends. HR told me she was very upset at being forced to try
to gain information for them, and actually had the gall to ask if my company
would be interested in prosecuting Olivia for blackmail.”

Ace
snorted. “Right. Because what Isabelle did wasn’t wrong at all.”

“
We have plenty of information on Rob and Olivia,” said
Kane. “All we need now is solid proof that Rob’s current aliases are
BreakingGlass
and
RisingWater
.”

“
Those aren’t two of the user names in the data HCS and
I intercepted,” said Barclay.

Kane
nodded. “I know. I’m not convinced he’s one of the original hackers, but I
still believe he’s tied to this.”

“
So what happens now?” asked Ace.

Kane
shrugged. “We keep doing what we’re doing, and we figure out a way to screen
potential employees better I suppose.”

The
men all talked at once. Kane heard remarks ranging from “Good luck with that
one” to “We’ll never weed out all the losers on the front end.” Kane knew they
were right. It was a crapshoot every time each of them hired someone, even into
an entry level position. The best any of them could hope for was that the
fail-safes in place continued to work.

Isabelle’s
attempted entry into a system she had no official access to had triggered one
of those fail-safes, and it had shut down her work station, just as it had been
designed to do. It had also sent alerts to Kane’s IT department head, to HR,
and to Kane himself. She never would have had a chance to do so much as look at
sensitive information, let alone copy it.

The
fact that Rob and Olivia had gone to such lengths to use Isabelle told Kane
without a doubt that Rob was connected to the Tommy Twister virus somehow. He
wouldn’t rest until he figured it out.

Later
that evening, Kane and Julianne were finally alone. He asked her how the party
went, and she talked for nearly two hours about Harper, Liane, Angela, and
Harper’s bridesmaids. She was so excited to be here, and to have met Harper,
Liane, and Angela. Kane found himself smiling and caught up in her enthusiasm.
He loved seeing her so happy.

“
I’ve been talking nonstop. I’m so sorry,” she said.
“How was your afternoon?”

“
Don’t be sorry. I love it that you had such a great
time.” He reiterated everything the men had talked about, including the news
about Isabelle.

“
Wow. I can’t believe she’d try to do something like
that. Didn’t she realize there was no way she could get in?”

“
She may have suspected as much, but I suppose I’d be
pretty desperate, too, if I knew someone still had a porn movie they’d made
starring me.”