The Fight In Us: A Brother's Best Friend College Romance (The Four Book 4) by Becca Steele (little readers .txt) 📕

to fall silent, and I sat back to watch this shitshow play out. Spinning in my chair, I took in the person she was addressing.

Her ex-best friend, Jessa, who was standing, frozen to the spot, tray in hand and her eyes wide.

“Fuck this,” Winter suddenly mumbled, swinging herself off Caiden’s lap and standing. Kinslee wasn’t far behind her. I watched, open-mouthed as she stormed up to Portia. “You’re. Not. Welcome. Here.” Every word was punctuated by a jab into Portia’s chest, and I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t known how overdue this was.

“Get the fuck out of here.” Kinslee came to stand next to Winter, her arms crossed across her chest.

Portia stared between them, blinking like she couldn’t quite believe what was happening, before she decided to cut her losses and turned on her heel, making a point of sauntering out, flicking her red hair and swaying her hips.

Winter threw herself back into Cade’s lap, inhaling a shaky breath. “I can’t believe that just happened.”

He grinned, placing a kiss on top of her head. “I fucking love you, Snowflake.”

“Where did Jessa go?” Kinslee slid back into her own seat, reaching out for her bottle of Sprite and taking a sip.

“Dunno, but I wonder what happened between them. I heard my mum saying that the De Witts had fallen out with the Thompsons, so it might’ve been something to do with their parents,” Cassius said.

“Probably pissed off that Lars De Witt went into business with Alstone Holdings.” Cade shrugged. “Whatever, I don’t wanna talk about Portia anymore.”

“Me neither. I need to finish up my essay before we meet Dad. Meet you out the front?” Standing, I swung my bag onto my shoulder.

“See ya later.”

Two hours later, my essay was done and submitted via the student portal, and I was ready to go. As I left Alstone College to meet up with Caiden, my phone rang, Lena’s name flashing up on the screen.

“Hi.” I heard the smile in her voice. “I just thought I’d wish you luck.”

“Thanks. I’m hoping we don’t need it, but I’ll keep you updated.” Sliding behind the wheel of my car, I checked my rear-view mirror before starting up the engine. “Come over later?”

Her voice went all soft. “Yeah.”

“Good. Talk to you later.” We said goodbye, and then I turned my car in the direction of my dad’s office.

This time, security was expecting us, and after being issued with passes, we were ushered straight up to the floor my dad’s office was on. His secretary greeted us—neither Caiden nor I ever learned their name, because they didn’t always last long, but we both gave her a polite hello before entering his office.

When we entered, he was placing his desk phone back down, a look of despair on his face. “Your cousin.” He sighed.

“I’m assuming you mean Roman. What’s he done now?” Caiden threw himself into a chair, looking amused. Our younger cousin, Roman Cavendish, had a bit of a reputation. He attended Hatherley Hall, an exclusive boarding school up in the Cotswolds, while my aunt and uncle worked overseas.

“You don’t want to know.” My dad groaned, rubbing his brow. “Something to do with arson, from what I can gather. Why my sister insists on involving me, I don’t know. I suppose I shall have to call the school board, yet again.”

“Good luck with that.” Caiden laughed, conveniently forgetting that he used to give my dad just as much grief when he attended Alstone High.

“We have approximately six minutes.” My dad steered the conversation away from the touchy subject of my cousin and on to the reason for Caiden’s and my presence. “I’ve called Martin in for an appraisal. If I’d called it a meeting, we would have run the risk of him bringing his laptop. You should have around thirty minutes to get the data, if all goes to plan.”

“Never expect a plan to go as planned,” Caiden cut in. “We’ll be as quick as we can.”

With Martin Smith occupied, we headed down the corridor to his office. We had to take care not to be seen, but thankfully this corridor only housed a small number of executive offices. We were lucky that Martin Smith didn’t have his own secretary—not in here, at least. He shared his with two other members of staff, and their secretary’s desk was out in the main room where a number of the lower-level employees worked.

The door was locked, but we had the pin code thanks to my dad, so that was soon taken care of. Inside, my eyes swept the sparsely furnished room, zeroing in on the sleek laptop that rested on his desk.

As we’d agreed earlier, Caiden kept watch while I got to work.

The laptop was locked, but I’d brought the solution with me. A small USB key that slotted into one of the ports on the side, it would bypass the security and, if all went well, copy the details of his hard drive across to the key. I’d written the program myself and tested it, so I was crossing my fingers that all would go well. I’d expected the laptop to have additional layers of security if it had sensitive information, so I just had to hope I’d done enough to get it to work.

I fitted it into the port and hoped for the best.

Thank fuck this wasn’t like one of those movies, where a random alarm would start blaring and a big message would appear on the screen saying ACCESS DENIED. Just the opposite—the computer unlocked straight away, and the program got to work.

1 hour 23 seconds remaining…

What the fuck? I let out a groan.

“What’s wrong?” Caiden hissed.

“It’s saying—”

15 minutes 45 seconds remaining…

“Never mind, it just thought it would scare the fuck out of me for a second.”

Caiden blinked, shrugging, then returned his attention to the doorway.

After the longest fifteen minutes of my life, the program had completed its task, and I quickly removed the USB key and pocketed it. Careful not to touch the laptop