Page 51 of All Tied Down

Thank fuck.

“Who then?”

“Royce is working on it so don’t do anything drastic,” he warns, his eyebrow arching as if to imply I’ve done that before.

I totally have.

Multiple times.

Lucky for me, I’ve always been right.

“You know I’ll fire everyone up there if I have to. It’ll be me, Des, and Nico answering phones and filing papers.”

“She’s kidding,” Tom says to Nico who shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“I’m not.”

“I know.” Nico dips his head. “I’d file papers if that’s what we needed to happen.”

Patting his shoulder, I smile. “See? He fits right in around here.”

“You mean he does what you want,” Tom corrects and I scoff playfully.

“I’m saying that he’s a valuable part of the team and I’m thankful to have him.”

“You make me so tired. I—” Tom stops and swipes his phone from the desk before the first ringtone ends. “Go.”

Lowering my voice, I look back at Nico as Tom presumably talks to Royce. “We’re definitely stopping for ice cream.”

“I’m really sorry about all this, Miss—Emerson.” His correction has me smiling as Tom disconnects and pushes back from the desk.

His nephew Royce is in charge of all things computer related. When he first moved in with Tom, he was still in high school and already on the wrong side of cyber law, but Tom gave him structure and a place he could use his skills for good.

And he has.

He’s more like a cousin to me—family—and right now I’m thankful, knowing he’ll leave no stone unturned on this.

“Royce found communications back and forth between Quinn and Heather Fraser on her computer here. She deleted the emails but Royce found them and other things.” My heart sinks as my eyelids flutter closed for the briefest second before I school my expression and push every ounce of disappointment and fury down.

Quinn has been with me for six months and was doing surprisingly well, minus the incident with the microwave. I’d had no complaints from Des or anyone else.

“Are we in the clear on this?” I ask and he nods.

“She violated the NDA and the terms of her employment. Termination is effective immediately.”

“I hope it was worth it,” I say to no one in particular. Terminations like this don’t happen often. We treat our employees well and in return, we gain loyalty and retention, but this—there’s no coming back from it. She’ll be lucky to get hired anywhere in Chicago once they find out why she was fired.

“Do you want me to handle it?” Tom asks, his voice surprisingly gentle, but I shake my head as I straighten my spine.

“No one fucks with me in my house.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I can feel the headache blooming behind my eyes as Des slides a bottle of pain reliever and some water across my desk and takes a seat.

Quinn had immediately broken down into tears when she saw me walk in flanked by Tom and Nico. She’d apologized profusely, but I didn’t stick around long enough to hear any of it.

“I’m sorry I didn’t catch it sooner. I should have known.” Des’s voice is quiet, but I can hear the guilt laced in there too.