The Boss Vol. 2 (The Boss #2) by Cari Quinn, Taryn Elliott

Chapter One
    W alking away from her was the hardest thing I’d ever done. That I’d done it before didn’t make it any easier.
    I crossed the tile floor of the lobby, barely aware of the sleeping building lumbering to life in the early morning. Carson Covenant Inc. never fully slept, but in the darkest part of the night, only a few sentinels remained in the glass fortress I’d built.
    Last night, my new assistant Grace and I had been there as well.
    And the fucking cameras.
    Cameras I’d forgotten about until our bodies were cooling in the vestibule that bore my name. Just as my skin now bore the imprint of her scent. Even as I walked, I could smell her all over me.
    Another kind of hell.
    I bypassed the fleet of elevators to go down the maze of halls that led deeper into the labyrinth of the building. I knew every one, had sketched them in my first shitty basement apartment back when I hadn’t had a credit card to my name. But by then, I’d started to dream.
    Dreaming was dangerous. Once you started, it was hard to stop.
    She didn’t know about the cameras embedded in the glass throughout the building. They were microscopic, laced in filaments similar to threads. New technology I’d eagerly embraced before it had even hit the market. I’d heard about the early prototypes and invested heavily to improve it enough to guard my glass empire.
    Never realizing those all-seeing eyes would capture me first.
    Normally I never forgot such things. Yes, it had been newly installed. Most of the staff wasn’t aware of its existence yet, as we rolled it out to all areas of the building—except the bathrooms, of course. Only essential personnel had been alerted thus far. But of course, the front vestibule had been the first area to be fitted with the new tech.
    Lucky me, I’d been the first bastard to get caught in living Technicolor. Me, and Grace.
    I never should’ve been so stupid. I didn’t make careless mistakes. If I had, I never would’ve risen to the heights I had before the age of thirty. But she had always broken all my rules.
    I could fix it. And I would.
    Violet Donnelly, our head of security, hadn’t arrived yet. That didn’t mean I had long. She was an early riser and exceedingly punctual. Of course I could go anywhere in the building I wished—perk of owning everything but the stretch of sky above it—but I didn’t want questions. I wanted to slip in, take care of the incriminating evidence, and get out. Undetected.
    I went through the necessary retina and fingerprint scans at the access point to the security room, barely able to remain still long enough for the lasers to work. I had to get rid of that footage. Grace was my employee, and that was bad enough. If Violet thought less of me for my dalliance, that was her right and probably understandable. What I couldn’t stomach was anyone thinking anything about Grace.
    The moment between us had been private. Private it would stay.
    Another set of clearances and I was inside the security room. I had been instructed by our new security company how this advanced tech worked, and Violet had provided additional information since she was a bit of a geek when it came to all things security-related. Only one reason she was so good at her job. But when I had to navigate through the series of blocks she’d set up to keep me out of accessing the security footage to my own system, I had to curse her efficiency.
    My fingers flew over the keyboard as I went deeper and deeper into the system. I finally found the security stills and scrolled through those to ascertain the time frame I needed to remove from the footage. Satisfying my need to see Grace naked and wrapped around me was secondary.
    I needed the proof any of it had really happened, and no longer existed in my fantasies as it had for so long.
    Not that exact encounter. How could I have guessed the steps that would’ve led us to that spot at that time? But being with her…yes. I’d never allowed myself to