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“Matty has met her son?”
“Well, we drove past them when they were waiting for a bus that never came.”
Rob smirks. “Metro Bus—or the lack of it—made your day? Doesn’t happen very often.”
“Good things happen to good people,” I argue, swiveling my chair. “Hey, how’s the new engineer going? What’s his name, Stefan Boss?” The 300-footer and 700-footer Pentela Next-Gen are complex machines with advanced AI embedded in most of their components. With the development of Hartley Marine’s upcoming collection falling behind schedule, we need an extra brain to support our lead marine engineer, Rocky, and his current team.
“He’s friggin’ great,” Rob responds. “But Rocky has been calling him an imposter. I really hope they can get along.”
When it comes to marine engineering, Rocky is our alpha. He’s Hartley’s first engineer and has been with us since it was just Rob and our father running the business. Perhaps it just takes time for those two to warm up to each other.
Rob adds, “And the newbie’s family name doesn’t help, I guess.”
“Stefan Boss, who’s not quite the boss,” I quip. “Well, they’re big boys. They’ll sort it out. What we need to worry about is our system security.”
Rob moves his gaze to blink up at the ceiling. I know I’ve just reminded him of something he’d rather forget. “The DDOS and injection attacks seem to have stopped now. Well, they never stop, but nothing like that day,” he remarks.
“Thank God for that.” I share his sentiment. I’ll never want that day to repeat again—what a welcome it was after my first vacation in… I don’t even know how long! “But it’s a matter of time before it happens again. Our team is still too small. Why is it so damn hard to find a good cyber engineer?”
“Every company is headhunting cyber engineers. It’s dog-eat-dog. But we’re still keeping at it.”
“By the way, our old friend Neo is back,” I tell Rob about one of our best customers, Prince Yiannis-Andreas of Greece. “He’s coming next week to take a look at the Pentela Next-Gen. He sounded keen to check out the floor plans too.”
“About time! Where has he been?”
“His divorce got nasty. He lost a lot of money for the settlement,” I explain.
“And he thought it was going to be forever,” Rob scoffs.
I bow my head. “Well, talking about forever… well, not forever yet. But I’m going to ask Isabelle out.”
My brother leans back, his steepled hands covering his mouth.
I fiddle with the silver ball on my desk. He gave it to me years ago, and it’s still my favorite office toy. When it spins, it creates an optical illusion like the ball was cascading into my desk.
With that illusion, my mind starts to picture what my war against Donovan Fletcher will look like. The anatomy somehow resembles that of the legend of Troy. I’m Paris, who stole Helen from the king of Sparta—and Rob is the big brother Hector who was left to defend the kingdom.
The possible consequences of my endeavor won’t be an illusion. Rob has every right to veto my decision if he wants to.
“I know you have your reservations,” I say to Rob, who’s looking at the same spinning ball. “But I’ll beat myself up if I don’t give it a go.”
“It’s your life, Clay. I can’t tell you what to do.”
“I’ll be careful.”
His big-brother look of wisdom rises on his face. “I’m with you, Clay. I want you to be happy, and we both know happiness doesn’t just arrive at the door with your name on it.”
I toss him a slight smile. I know he’ll always have my back. “Thanks, Rob. That means a lot, but I’ve got to do this alone.”
Hell yes! I’ll make damn sure my affair is between me, Isabelle, and Fletcher. No one touches Rob or his family, or Matty, or even Hartley Marine, for that matter. No Trojan horse will ever bring us down. Not on my watch!
“So, when’s the date?” he asks with interest.
“I’m hoping this weekend.”
“Good luck.”
I wink at him as he steps away from my desk.
