Sentenced to Marriage

Chapter 42

Like a detective on the case I had to admit that eating pizza with Aren in his super–fancy office was a peculiar experience. If anyone could ever look glamorous and captivating while shoving a pizza triangle in their mouth, it would be Aren. I had no idea how he pulled that off, but I should have expected that much. After all, his aura of dominance was as strong as ever, even when he was wearing a pair of jeans and a casual shirt instead of his elegant suit.

He insisted that I go home, but I said that I wanted to stay in the company and go through the surveillance footage with him and Mr. Clark. I was swaying on my feet, but it was also the most exciting and thallenging event I had ever been a part of. There was no way in hell that I would have missed it. Of course, I couldn‘t say it in front of Aren. I bet that he found nothing exciting about dealing with the huge number of problems that this hacker attack had caused...

After I firmly stated that I wasn‘t going anywhere, Aren finally agreed for me to join the mole tracking squad. Unfortunately, it wasn‘t as exciting as I initially thought. Since I had narrowed down the time frame to an hour window, I assumed that we would find the mole quickly. What I didn‘t assume was that there were over twenty cameras around the department‘s corridor and entrance and that there was no camera directed at any of the computers in the planning department. That made everything much more complicated.

An hour later, I was staring blankly at the monitor, trying to make a list of people that had a chance of getting closer to one of the computers. Having a complete list of employees from that department along with their pictures to compare in front of me, I kept making notes, trying to determine a potential mole, but truthfully, I didn‘t feel like it was going anywhere. “Is there anything particular that we should pay attention to?” Mr. Clark asked, taking a short break from watching his part of the footage.

He and three other security department employees shifted their eyes from the monitors to me, seeking my guidance.

–“Well... we could be looking for a flash drive which could look like... anything... But the mole could send the software from his phone, for example, through the Bluetooth connection.” I smiled wryly, knowing that my information wasn‘t helpful at all.

“Don‘t look at the objects. Look at people instead,” Aren instructed as he stopped in between writing the hundredth email to manage the crisis. “We need to focus on finding the anomaly in human behavior. Look for anyone nervous, distracted, or oddly anxious, and put that person on the list,” he ordered.

The five of us going through the footage nodded and got back to observing the screen with the new approach in mind. Unfortunately, every single face I saw on my monitor seemed equally normal or dull. Not a single out–of–ordinary gesture caught my attention until one person popped out on the screen– Davies. My heart started to pound, although it could have been normal that he was caught in the footage. After all, his department cooperated with the planning department rather closely. Nonetheless, I had this feeling in my gut that he wasn‘t there for any work–related reason. He looked over his shoulder several times, and then I saw him calling out for one of the planners

and stopping him in the middle of the corridor. The guy whom Davies stopped seemed a bit startled when Davies walked toward him. He said a few words to the planner and pointed at the planning department‘s open–space office. A minute later, they both disappeared inside. A wave of wicked excitement rushed through me. I checked the timing mark on the footage–it said twenty past three. It wasn‘t the proof I wanted, but it was odd enough behavior to raise suspicion. I ignored the rest of the people I had put on my list before and skipped the footage on fast–forward until I saw Davies again. When he walked out into that corridor again, he was alone. It was ten past four. He seemed nervous– he kept wiping his palms on his pants and turning his head around to glance back at the office he had just exited from.

“I think I‘ve found something,” I announced agitatedly.

Aren and the others stood up and walked over to my desk to look at my screen. I showed them the parts of the footage where Davies entered and then walked out of the open–space office. As I watched it again, I became even more certain that I was looking at the mole. Was I prejudiced because I suspected him from the start? I suddenly started to wonder what if I wasn‘t about to accuse the wrong person... “Has anyone seen Davies in any of the other cameras‘ footage?” Aren asked, looking at Mr. Clark and his subordinates.

Everyone shook their heads. A sound of frustration left my throat. It was four in the morning, and we hadn‘t found anything solid.

“Please, Ms. Bell, don‘t beat yourself up. You‘ve found enough for us to make use of it,” Mr. Clark said.

K Sald.

“How is that enough?” I argued. “You gave us a reasonable suspect, and judging by his lack of composure, he would be easy to break during the interrogation,” he explained, his eyes dangerously darkening. I swallowed and looked at Aren. He smirked and patted my shoulder.

“Mr. Ronald Clark used to be a police detective, and he‘s highly efficient in cases like this one, ‘” he assured me.

I smiled nervously at both men. They seemed confident about getting Davies to confess. I truly hoped that it was possible. Aren told his employees to go home and get some rest. He and Mr. Clark planned to ambush Davies in the morning, as soon as he showed up at work.

“I texted Marcus. He will take you back to the penthouse. You need to go to sleep. I will stay here and sleep in the office as soon as I‘m done sending instructions to the managers who handled the intercepted project,” Aren said.

This time I had no strength to argue. I nodded weakly and started packing my equipment. My brain was overloaded with information and needed a few hours of sleep to process everything. Nonetheless, I was highly unsatisfied with how little we had found.

“Can I take the rest of the footage home?” I asked. “I just want to check something one more time when I wake up...”

Aren smiled and walked over to me to place a soft kiss on my forehead. “Of course,” he replied, and told someone to d******d the whole material to my flash drive.

I couldn‘t remember the exact moment I fell asleep. It must have been about two seconds after my head landed on the pillow. I truly hoped that Aren took some time to sleep as well. He worked relentlessly for hours with little regard for his health. I might have been merely his contracted liancée, but I felt as if it should have been my responsibility to take care of him... or at least to make sure that he would take care of himself. Since, at that moment, I could do neither of those things, I decided to go to his office to check on him later. There was one thing that I needed to do first…

I made myself a mug of coffee, turned on my computer, and played the recorded footage that wasn‘t mine to check. There was one camera directed at the open office‘s glass door. It was the footage from that camera that I had to see. © 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

I wasn‘t certain what I was hoping for because it wasn’t possible to see any desk or computer from the angle of the recording. I was just about to turn it off when two people opened the glass door and kept it open for a while by standing on the threshold. As I looked closely, I saw an image reflected by the glass. “It looks like Davies...” I muttered, zooming the reflection in the recorder frame.

Once I cleared the picture, my heart started to hammer against my chest. The chances were little to none, but I found the footage of Davies sitting by the computer in the planning department‘s office and

typing something. As I thought that it couldn‘t get any better, the next few seconds of the recording registered him removing a flash drive from the computer’s USB port and putting it into his pocket.

A happy scream left my throat. It was the evidence that could be used against him. It wasn‘t ideal, but it was like proving that he was at the crime scene at the exact time the crime took place! Before I knew it, my hand was on the phone, and I was picking Aren‘s number. “Good morning, beautiful,” he answered with a hoarse, slightly sleepy voice. I smiled uncontrollably at the sexiness of his tone. “Good morning, handsome. How‘s the interrogation going?” I asked, trying to sound serious, even though the level of excitement was almost making me explode.

“Not so good for now...” Aren sighed in frustration. “Ronald is pushing him, but Davies sticks to his version. He claims that he visited the planning department only to offer tickets for the next Yankees game to a friend he had there. He claims that his friend refused, and he got back to his office.”

“Did you check that so–called friend‘s version?” I inquired.

“We did right away,” Aren said. “His name is Jonathan Warwick. He was the person from the footage standing with Davies. He confirmed Davies‘s words. Furthermore, Davies says that he didn‘t even touch any of the planning department computers that day. My complacency grew by the second. “He says that he didn‘t touch any of their computers all day, huh?”

“My fiancée seems to be in a good mood I hear.” I could hear the smile rising in his voice. I chuckled. “You need to keep dear Mr. Davies locked up until I get there because your amazing