Page 7 of Shadows of Obsession
“What a joke. Shouldn't have mentioned the cerebellum. He'll have a heart attack before we really do anything,” I tell my friend, who throws the hammer down and turns to me frowning.
“Heard of Rosnek Enterprises?” he asks though he knows the answer from my face.
“I'll ask around. Must be new players - we know and watch all the major competitors,” I say, rolling down my sleeves and running a hand through my hair.
“Leaving already?” Damien asks.
“This isn't fun, it's boring. Bet when he wakes up, he'll either have a stroke or faint again.”
“I'll let him go. Want Devin to know we can grab any of his people anytime, but the threat remains, Roman. You're next and you know it.”
I turn to him and nod before heading upstairs.
I know they'll come for me next. It's what I'd do if I wanted to take over a city's arms trade. Attack on all fronts to create chaos. Easy to seize power when the biggest distributors are attacking each other and throwing accusations.
What these Irish idiots don't know is that Damien and I have always worked together. They'll find out if Ben tells them he saw me in the basement, but I don't care. Time they learned it's not just the Russian mafia, but the Polish too, coming for blood.
Getting into my car, I call Lev.
“Need everything you can find on Rosnek Enterprises.”
Lev handles all information, security, and computers for my organization.
“You'll have it in your email tomorrow,” he says and hangs up.
Wish Ben had been more of a challenge, but at least I got to pull some nails. My hand trembles on the knife I carry.
Soon. I know a war's coming, and so does the demon inside me, waking up at the smell of blood.
Chapter 5
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Luna
I spend the morning wrapping up Friday's loose ends before our team meeting. The moment Finn, our project manager, starts cracking jokes during our usual greetings, my internal alarm goes off. Something's definitely wrong.
The man wouldn't know funny if it slapped him in the face. I swear his sense of humor never made it past conception - he's the most insufferable micromanager I've ever met, and trust me, if he could find a way to breathe down our necks even more than he already does, he would.
"Alright, enough with the jokes," Finn chirps, his voice hitting a pitch that has me wincing and adjusting my headphones. "Just got an email from Gregory with some huge news - we found a buyer for the company!"
Perfect. Just perfect.
I mean, we all saw this coming. It was always the endgame - catch some big fish's attention and get bought out. Gregory's been running on fumes trying to raise capital, but the money well's nearly dry. Without a serious cash injection, we can kiss product development goodbye.
Nobody wants to invest money in products that don't generate colossal amounts of money, which our product doesn't. The whole thing started because of tragedy, really. Gregory and his friends launched the company after one of their own landed in the hospital. No one saw it coming - he'd just been feeling off for a while.
Then came the diagnosis: grade IB pancreatic tumor. That's when the idea hit them. If they'd had some way to track his symptoms, to see how things had progressed over time... well, maybe things would've been different. That's how the monitoring bracelets were born.
Now we're sitting in this uncomfortable silence, the kind where everyone's got something to say but no one wants to speak first. I've never been good with quiet moments like these, so I figure I might as well break the ice.
"Who's buying us out?" I ask, and I can practically feel Finn's relief that someone finally broke the silence.
Look, he's not terrible - he just thinks riding our backs twenty-four seven will magically make the product develop itself faster.
"All I know is it's some major IT player," he says, practically bouncing in his seat. "Big portfolio, deep pockets. And get this - you're all getting signing bonuses." The moment 'bonus' leaves his lips, the chat explodes with excited chatter. I stay on mute, just listening.
Cute how he says 'you're all' getting bonuses, like he isn't walking away with a check twice the size of ours.
