It wasn’t long before they were back in the city and he was pulling up in front of her building. “Do you want me to wait while you take care of the cat? You can stay at my house tonight.”
Rosslyn leaned over and kissed him briefly. “This girl needs to get some sleep tonight or I’m going to be dragging my butt into work tomorrow. I might not like my job, but I need it.”
When she got out of the car and closed the door, he wished she’d have said yes. She hadn’t made it in the building and he missed her already. That was absolutely ridiculous and only confirmed why they shouldn’t live together. He liked his space. And right now, he was going home to enjoy it.
As he pulled away he finally turned his cell phone back on. There were at least twenty missed calls from his brothers. He wasn’t sure which to call first. So he decided to go the path of least resistance and call Seth. He was the one who rarely had any issues. If he did, he didn’t bring them to Charles.
“Hey Seth, what’s going on?”
“We were hacked,” Seth announced.
“What do you mean hacked?” Charles asked, now wishing he’d answered earlier.
“I mean some asshole was able to get through our firewall and access some of our files. Not everything, because our security team noticed it early. But shit Charles, who the fuck did you piss off to start messing with us?”
His first thought would be Maxwell, but what would he benefit by getting into their computer files? Maxwell would probably do what he had done to their father and go after his building reputation. That was a lot harder to recover from than some damn missing files.
“No one that I’m aware of. Have you talked to Gareth about it?”
Seth said, “You’re the CEO.”
“And Gareth has connections,” Charles said flatly.
“We all met about this a few hours earlier, you know when we were calling and you were ignoring.”
He didn’t feel guilty in the least. It seemed as though they’d handled it appropriately. To Charles, that was a positive thing. Once again, they were working together. Maybe it’s been me holding them back from that all along. Had his need for controlling everything been what had driven them away from Lawson Steel in the first place?
“Seems like I wasn’t needed after all,” Charles stated.
“No. Gareth stepped in and confirmed that nothing serious had taken place. But this isn’t like you Charles. Normally you stand at the helm, and we’d only hear about a problem in a meeting later.”
It was him holding them back. Damn it. All this time he’d thought he was leading, just like his father had done to him years ago, but maybe that’s not what they wanted, or needed. Should he consider stepping down? Was he not the right person for the job?
As though the universe knew he needed an answer, Seth added, “We’re used to you always handling everything. Guess we took for granted that you always would be. This was a good wakeup call that we need to step it up and get more involved.”
“I’d like that. I really would like all of your opinions on some ideas.” This was a good week to present them too. And when that was out of the way, he could inform them of what he’d been distracted with, besides the lovely Rosslyn. Hopefully they would be as understanding as Gareth and Dylan had been. If they weren’t, well, that wasn’t going to stop him. This decision wasn’t being made as the CEO of Lawson Steel. This was personal. I’m doing this for Dad.
After he got off the phone with Seth, Charles returned Gareth’s call.
“You’re late.”
Charles ignored it. “Seth already updated me. I don’t think it’s Maxwell, but do you think it’s linked to the Hendersons?”
“Hendersons? I thought you said that was a dead end?”
“It is. Gia was just playing around. She likes researching old things, but has no real credentials.”
“And that’s why you mentioned the Hendersons?” Gareth asked.
“Just grasping at straws. I have no idea who would hack into our system.”
“Me.”
Charles had to be hearing things. Did Gareth just admit he was the hacker? “What are you talking about? You have access to everything already.”
“I do. And if you recall, you asked me to make sure everything was good to go for when you dropped the dime on Maxwell.”
“And you found flaws that need fixing. Good. Can you fix them?”