Page 46 of Taken By My Grumpy Pakhan

“Of course it won’t, but if you’re going to be…” I made a show of looking at my watch. “Thirty minutes late to an hour meeting, you should have a reasonable explanation.”

Her eyes flashed. The change was so fast I would’ve missed it if I weren’t watching. Her hands curled on both sides. “I had a family emergency.”

“And you couldn’t send a notice?”

She did look like she arrived in a hurry. Her hair was a bit wild, her makeup lightly done and there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. All things that should make her look less attractive but somehow, my cock thought differently.

“It was a mistake, sir.” Her voice was hard. “It won’t happen again.”

“Incompetent.”

Her eyes lifted. “Huh?”

“Incompetent, not a mistake.”

I gestured for the presenter to continue, letting him run for a minute before returning my attention to the woman who was staring daggers at me.

“Sit.”

If Nikolai was smirking before, he was straight up grinning, while the rest of the staff looked like they were barely perching on their seats.

The distance between Genevieve and me was about ten seats, but I could feel the heat of her stare from my chair. I’d pushed too hard.

“…we have concluded all system runs and are ready to launch.”

The intern presenting concluded, pulling my attention from Genevieve.

It was a nice concept but I wasn’t satisfied. A lot of security models sounded good till you adapted them to day-to-day activity.

The life I lived required ironclad-impenetrable security, and my lack of trust in others prompted Nikolai and me into building one for ourselves, and somehow, it became a global enterprise.

So I always considered myself the first-line customer of every product, and if it didn’t give me a sense of security, it wouldn’t hit the market.

“Run it over one last time, fix every loophole and release it to beta users for three months. Report findings.”

The intern's proud smile faltered, but he nodded regardless. “Yes, Sir.”

The meeting was dismissed with Nikolai pointing out weak codes and firewalls and getting a copy of the product to run through his computers.

The room slowly began to empty of staff. “Miss Sinclair.” I called when she got to the door. “Coffee.”

She didn’t look back, but I saw her head bob before she exited the room.

She arrived with the coffee shortly after I entered my office.

“Your coffee, sir.” She placed the steaming cup on my table. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

I ignored the cup in front of me. Frankly, I had no use for coffee after two glasses of liquor. “How was your night?”

“It was fine, sir. Thank you for asking. Is there something else you’d want?” she repeated, still not looking at me.

“Any details of your night or the morning after you’d like to share?”

“I believe those are hardly appropriate questions, Mr. Ivanovich.”

I couldn’t help the twitch of my lips at her formality. It was almost amusing to watch. “Mr. Ivanovich?”

“Unless your employers have been deceived with an alias, I believe that is your name.”