The Ultimate Chance-Chapter 165

Music recommendation: Liar-Hooked like Helen

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That night.

Damon rapped his knuckles gently on the door to the home office and poked his head in. "Dinner delivery for Miss Workaholic?"

Avery smiled from behind the desk, glancing at the clock on the wall. "It’s night already?"

He nodded. "I’m just about to put the kids to sleep."

She checked her progress and stood. "I’m coming too. I can eat after." She had promised Angel to always tuck him in if she was home no matter how busy she was, and she was not about to break that promise.

Damon placed the tray he had brought on the large desk and followed her out of the room.

The duo jumped into Angel’s bed when they saw them, ready for their bedtime story. Avery smiled and chose a book for them.

"The Snow Queen?"

They both nodded, so she sat on Aubrey’s side while Damon sat on Angel’s.

Like clockwork, Angel was asleep by the time she finished the first Chapter, but Aubrey was still wired. She looked up at Avery and asked, "Aunt Avery, can I stay here with Angel?"

Avery darted her gaze at Damon. She wasn’t quite sure what Aubrey was asking. "Forever?" She pried.

When the girl nodded, she was helpless.

"If it’s up to Damon and me, we would love you to stay." She said shortly. She didn’t want to make a promise on behalf of Charles. Besides, she was sure when Julie told her to take care of her daughter, she didn’t mean for her to take the girl away from her father.

Aubrey looked like she had many more questions but her eyelids were starting to droop in response to the gentle tune that had been serving as background music to Damon and Avery reading the story.

When she was asleep and Avery had tucked her in in her bed, she kissed her forehead. "Night, sweetheart."

They left the room one after another, Damon unable to keep his curiosity. "Why would she want to live with us?" He wondered. Not that he minded it. It was quite the contrary, actually. Aubrey was a lovely child and they had more than enough room for someone else, especially when that person was Angel’s best friend.

But it didn’t make much sense. Aubrey’s family had always been happy, or at least that was how it seemed. He had a feeling she was not just asking to live with them because she would like to spend more time with Angel.

"I don’t know, Damon." She sighed, remembering the woman she had caught sight of.

However, she would have to think about that tomorrow. Right now, she was getting closer to discovering what she had been investigating for hours. It seemed like a pure coincidence.

That was the only reason why she had not told anyone else about her suspicion. It was not odd for rising companies to try to advance by using other companies in the same field.

The CEO of High Tide might just be one of those insanely ambitious businessmen who didn’t mind bumping several shoulders and was probably only using the company to hide whatever else he did in the shadows to earn his money.

But she couldn’t stop thinking there had to be a specific reason why Vaillant Telecommunications was the one being targeted and not any of its competitors.

She wasn’t sure whether or not she should tell Damon about it.

But when she remembered how good he was at digging skeletons out of people’s closet, she decided to tell him all about it in the end.

He looked at the old emails she had dug up as well as text messages from Martin’s phone with interest. "Are you sure it’s him?"

She rubbed her temples. "That’s the thing. I can’t be certain whether that’s the truth or if Gad is covering up for the real culprit by telling me something believable that would take my mind off the truth for long enough for him to hide his tracks."

Damon scrolled through the emails and texts and didn’t find anything. The man was squeaky clean.

"This certainly is suspicious." He said. "You can’t be this flawless unless you are trying to hide something. It’s almost as if he knew you would look into him."

She agreed. It had given her a headache.

"Let me help you with this." He offered.

It was what she was about to ask for, so she nodded and kissed his lips. "Thanks, my love."

He tickled her side. "Don’t thank me yet. You’re still going to pay for it." He joked.

"Then I should do it in advance." She licked her lips and dropped to her knees before him and parted his legs to slot herself between them. She wanted to get her mind off the things that were weighing on her as well.

Later, she finally had her dinner as Damon worked on her computer. Hours passed with him digging into Martin and Gad and her using his laptop to read her emails and respond to some.

When she saw that it was almost midnight, she was just about to suggest that they go to bed and worry about it the following day when he spoke up.

"Fuck!"

"What is it?" She shuffled over to him to see what he was so shocked about.

"The CEO of High Tide is Edwin Raymond." He said.

"And?" She blinked in confusion, not quite understanding why he made it sound like she should know who the hell that was. But the surname sounded eerily familiar, ticking off the warning bells in her head.

He turned her laptop to face her so she would see the man whose picture he had pulled up. When she still didn’t make the connection, she explained, "his brother is Scott Raymond."

Her stomach made an uncomfortable lurch.

Well, fuck.

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It was easier to pretend things were only wrong on the surface level than consider the fact that they were being controlled by someone behind the scenes.

The following day, Avery sent a warning letter to Martin.

She knew if she fired him, Edwin and Gad would simply find someone else to use to get to her. It was easier to deal with a mole she already knew about than a new one who would pop out of any new department.

Still, she wasn’t buying Gad’s story about the mole being Martin. She had a feeling it was both of them.

To test her theory, she told Mina to send a marketing campaign to Gad on Saturday.

Not everyone worked Saturdays, most employees preferred to have the weekends to themselves. However, Gad was one of the workaholics who worked every possible hour hoping they would get promotions.

While Gad had put in so many hours, that didn’t mean he qualified for an executive position. Besides, he owed child support to three different women and had always evaded paying—which in itself proved his character was questionable— and sometimes made impulsive decisions that he was too stubborn to change his mind about. That couldn’t result in anything too tragic in his current post but if he were to move up the ladder, it might be chaotic if he did something on a whim. Instead, Avery had been considering him as one of the employees on a thin thread ever since the servers shut down in the middle of a major project. The only reason he received a warning instead of his last paycheck was because the servers had automatic backup that was pretty much thanks to him.

But maybe, he’d always been salty about not receiving a promotion and being bypassed—even though he knew he didn’t deserve the promotion in the first place. He could be in on it as well.

Sure enough, on Monday, the first thing she saw was High Tide’s advertisement that was exactly like the dummy Mina sent over. It was one of the campaigns Mina had created before and had been rejected in favor of another, but that didn’t mean she was happy to see it plastered across the competitors’ website.

At this point, Edwin was taunting her, begging for her to retaliate.

"Not a chance, asshole." She muttered. She was going to retaliate, alright, but she was not going to give in to his provocation. She had to know what she was up against first and so far, all she knew was that he was Scott’s brother.

Just when she had long forgotten about her past, that snake was slithering back into her life.

Mina knocked on the door to her office and poked in as she thought about it.

"Hey," Mina smiled as she came in.

Avery looked up. "Please tell me you have good news."

Mina held up the little box she was carrying. "Is this good enough?"

Avery had to hold herself back from squealing like an excited little girl. "It arrived!"

"Finally." Mina winked. "Now, what are you still doing here? Your appointment is in half an hour."

"Oh, right." Avery cracked her knuckles. She had almost forgotten what day today was. Damon’s birthday. "But Edwin..." she pointed at the file on her desk, which Mina had been the one to pull up.

"Forget about him. You can always investigate some more later." Mina brushed her off. "Go on, hurry."