Mercury?”
“Yeah, and if you two would pay attention for one minute, I could show you. You wanna see it on the big screen, so we don’t have to crowd around my phone?”
We followed him into the computer room, and he sat down in front of his giant monitors, typing madly on his keyboard.
A file appeared on the screen. A normal, innocent-looking file icon.
It was the name of the file that caused my breath to catch in my fucking throat.
Andromeda.
FOUR
Andromeda. I stared at the screen. “West? What’s this?” My voice came out weak and breathless.
“We’ll go through it now. We have a problem, though. Before we look at the file, there’s something you all need to know.” He spun in his chair to face us; his gaze serious. “I think Mercury knows who I am. Who we are.”
“What?” Caiden hissed from behind me.
“The whole thing is fucking weird. I’ve never told Mercury the details of Winter’s dad’s death, or anything to do with that. But this file?” He paused, and his eyes met mine. “Mercury retrieved this file from the storage servers at the university your dad worked at. It was an encrypted file, in a folder full of all his university research. Pretty well hidden, but also hidden in plain sight, if that makes sense? Since it was in with all his other astronomy-related stuff.”
“I-I don’t understand.” My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t make sense of what Weston was saying.
Caiden’s arms came around me, and he took my shaking hands in his. His presence bolstered me, and I took a deep breath. “So you’re telling me that Mercury knew where to look for this file, without knowing about my dad?”
“Yeah.” His gaze was full of worry. “I don’t know what’s going on. Unless Mercury somehow managed to hack into our own secure storage to get the stuff we saved on there and found out that way, but I’ve put so many layers of security on it, it would take him forever to hack into it. And I don’t see why he would, either.”
“So…the most likely explanation is that he knows who we are. Or who I am, at least.” This was another complication, but at the same time… “Okay, I don’t think we necessarily need to worry about Mercury’s identity right now. He’s always been reliable, right? Always helped you out?”
Weston nodded. “Yeah, I’ve never had any reason to doubt him.”
“Well, then. Let’s put that aside for now. Open the file.”
He clicked the little folder icon, and a list of filenames came up. I leaned closer to see. There were audio files, documents, and images, all there to view. Weston clicked on the file at the top of the list, which was sorted in date order.
My dad’s voice came through the speakers, and I fell apart.
I gradually became aware of Caiden’s voice close to my ear. I was huddled into him, my eyes swollen from crying, my throat raw, my tears soaking his T-shirt. He held me tightly, stroking his hand through my hair, soothing me.
“I’m here, Snowflake. I’ve got you.” I raised my face to meet his, and he gave me a sad smile. “I’m sorry, baby.”
“I-it just hit me. Hearing his voice again after so long, it brought it all back…”
“You don’t have to explain anything.” He kissed my forehead, and used his thumb to carefully wipe away the remainder of my tears. Fuck, I loved him. He knew exactly what I needed.
“I’m okay.” I repeated the words, my voice stronger, willing myself to make them become true. “I’m okay. West? You wanna play the audio?”
He nodded and clicked the file again.
I took a deep breath, hearing my dad’s deep, rumbling voice coming through the speakers. Steeling myself, I pushed my emotions aside until I could deal with them.
“Voice memo,” he announced. “I have reason to believe that my ex-wife may be responsible for plotting to overthrow Alstone Holdings.” At his words, all of us gasped. He went on to detail how he’d overheard her meeting with Petr, which we’d seen the images of. There was no other new information.
Once the audio had finished, Weston turned back to me. “Are you okay to carry on?”
“Yes.” I nodded firmly. “We need answers, and we need to go through every single one of these files.”
He opened the second file.
It was another audio recording. The sound quality was awful, and I could barely make out anything that was being said, although my mother’s voice was faintly discernible. There was the