Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 182075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Oh God.
Yep. She was going to be sick.
“They could come home at any moment,” she warned, wanting him out of here. Even if that meant that she had to go with him.
“Well, you better hope they don’t.” He drew something out of his pocket. A needle? What was he going to do? Drug her?
He grabbed her, twisting her around in front of him, with his arm over her mouth and nose so she could breathe.
“Night-night.”
The last thing she felt was a small prick on her neck.
Consciousness pulled at her.
There was some reason she had to wake up and she didn’t know why.
Danger.
There was danger.
“You’re sure they’ll never know I was here?” Billy asked.
Who was he talking to?
“Don’t worry . . . they won’t . . .” the other voice was faint.
What was going on?
Before she could figure it out, she fell back into the darkness.
9
How the fuck did someone undercut them?
“I thought that bid was in the bag? We got it in on time and the feedback was good, right? How did someone undercut us?” Spencer asked.
It was early Friday morning and Quaid felt like he hadn’t slept in days.
At first, he’d been occupied with the hackers who’d attempted to get through their cyber security last weekend, which had been a nightmare.
And now this?
Their bid for this job had been submitted Wednesday night before the five p.m. cutoff. It was an excellent bid. Everything should have gone smoothly.
Only now they’d learned that someone else had won the bid.
Fuck. It was probably a good thing that Indie hadn’t turned up yesterday to stay with them. Although he wasn’t happy that she hadn’t answered any of the messages they’d sent her.
But he pushed that worry to one side for the moment.
“I’ve contacted someone I know who works there,” Slade said. “I’ll see what they say.”
The four of them were in Slade’s home office.
“Rock gave them everything they wanted,” Spencer said, pacing up and down the room.
Slade’s phone buzzed. “What the fuck? Zodiac Construction won the bid with a last-minute submission.”
“Zodiac Construction, huh?” Quaid murmured. “They’re becoming a pain in the ass.”
This wasn’t the first time they’d come up against them. There work was far shoddier than their company, though.
“How did they undercut us?” Spencer asked. “I didn’t know they were even bidding.”
“What the fuck?” Slade snarled as he moved to his computer. “How the fuck did this happen?”
“What is it?” Quaid walked over with the others, blinking as he looked at a copy of some of the plans submitted by Zodiac Construction.
That were eerily similar to the plans Rock had drawn up.
“Is it my imagination or are they really similar to ours?” Spencer asked.
Rock took over the computer as Slade started to pace. Then he sent a message to their group chat.
Rock: They’re similar. Eerily similar. But there’re enough differences that we’d have trouble arguing that they copied ours. Not without proof.
“Whose were submitted first?” Quaid asked.
Slade stared at him, then tapped out a message on his phone. Whoever his contact was must have gotten back to him quickly as he let out a noise filled with anger before picking up a stapler from this desk and throwing it at the wall.
Fuck.
“Zodiac Construction got in first,” Slade said grimly. “Meaning we’re on the back foot. They’re similar but different enough that they don’t care. They’re taking the cheapest bid.”
Quaid watched Slade with a passiveness he didn’t feel. Inside, his emotions were rioting.
But he’d long since learned to keep his outer appearance under control. Any show of emotion would have brought hell down on his shoulders as a child and teenager.
So he locked everything down tight.
Dear old dad would be so proud if he saw him now. Although he wouldn’t approve of his friends . . . well, maybe Slade.
But Rock? Definitely not. A guy who didn’t talk and drove around in a beat-up truck and had been at their school on a scholarship?
Hell no.
Dear old dad wouldn’t like that.
And then there was Spencer. Who had the sort of family that they’d all dreamed about as kids. Parents who loved him. Siblings that adored him.
Yet the Duke would look down his nose at Spencer because his family didn’t have breeding. Yeah, they were richer than God.
But it was new money.
Didn’t matter that Spencer’s father was a fucking genius at the stock market and had earned that money.
Didn’t matter that Spencer’s mum gave millions every year to charities.
The fact that they didn’t flaunt their wealth with expensive cars and the right postcodes would be a mark against them in his father’s eyes.
Oh, and it also wouldn’t occur to him to be ashamed of the fact that he’d lost all of their family money. No, because they were still Ashworths. Some distant fucking relative to the royal family.
So Quaid watched Slade tear himself apart, raging at the fact that their bid had obviously been stolen and used to undercut them on The Paulsen deal.