historical

A maid brought in some drinks for Camilla and Benedict who were parched from their rush to Mountain View.

As soon as they had gathered themselves, Camilla nodded to Cedric. Gesturing that she was ready to tell them what they had rushed over for.

"How is it that Lucius Ting managed to get ahead of us?" Cedric asked Camilla and Benedict. "We already planned to give him some suppliers, not these, but others."

"It seemed that these suppliers were even less loyal than the original ones you had picked out." Camilla informed Cedric.

"So how did he manage to get these suppliers, they are our top two suppliers for our microchips and plastics?" Cedric asked Camilla. "Isn't that information confidential?"

"It was." Camilla said with a frown. "We recently allowed our suppliers to list us as their customers."

"So he found them off websites?" Cedric asked in a suspicious tone. "Camilla, what else?" Cedric asked. He knew that wasn't all that had happened.

Camilla hesitated before finally speaking up.

"We had an employee that left a while back and joined Arch Group." Camilla informed Cedric.

"And what did this employee do?" Cedric asked her, impatience clear in his tone. He didn't like having to ask questions to get to the point. Camilla should have known that, but in her fear of his anger she forgot.

"He was part of our procurement team." Camilla said with a frown. "They were our top suppliers when he left, and when he moved to Arch Group he gave Lucius the names of these companies."

"And Lucius didn't trust you enough to ask you?" Cedric asked Camilla with a raised eyebrow.

"Cedric!" Ayanna scolded as she glared at her brother. She didn't appreciate the way Cedric was speaking to Camilla. It was clear that the woman was scared of what Cedric would say about the slip up.

"I'm not mad at her for the reasons you think, Ayanna." Cedric said as he glared at his sister. "I am not like them." He said as he thought of all the abusive and manipulative people they had faced over the years.

"Cedric, you will not talk to your sister or Camilla that way." Emilio Reyes said as he tried to knock some sense into his son. "What has gotten into you? Where is your calm demeanour, think logically."

Cedric closed his eyes and took deep breaths, his father was right. He had overreacted and lost his cool.

He was supposed to think with his head, not his heart.

"Camilla, I didn't mean to criticize you because Lucius didn't come to you for the information." Cedric explained in a kinder, calmer tone.

"So why did you ask that then?" Camilla asked Cedric as she gave him a confused look. She had worked for Cedric for a while now and generally she was able to read his moods and expressions, but this time she was confused.

"From the beginning I didn't want you to enter into a fake relationship with Lucius.": Cedric said as he took a deep breath and continued to explain. "Not because I was worried you would actually fall for him. I don't care who you love, but rather because I am worried about the risk you are taking."

"I took this risk all on my own, Ced." Camilla told him with a frown. "I entered into this fake relationship with him, knowing that my life would be at risk."

"Camilla, I know you considered all the dangers, but I would rather not see my friends in harm's way just because of business." Cedric said with a deep frown.

"Ced, you need to trust me on this. Trust us." Camilla pleaded as she referred to herself and her brother.

"Cedric, Camilla has Lucius Ting way too in love with her for this not to work." Benedict said from the side.

Cedric thought of the man Ian referred to as Camilla's long lost love, the man that she still waited for until this day.

He couldn't help but wonder how that man would feel seeing the woman he loved with another man. But would that long lost love still want Camilla? That was the conflict in his mind at the moment. He didn't want to risk Camilla's happiness just for a competition between businesses.

"How did he convince them to switch sides? To break their contract with us?" Cedric finally said as he gave in to Camilla's and Benedict's pleas for him to trust them with this matter. "And how did you find out?" He asked.

"I'll start with how did we find out." Benedict told Cedric, answering for his sister.

"As your scandal broke out, Lucius asked us to visit him at home." Benedict explained. "When we got there, they did something they had never done in the past, they inspected our phones."

"They were probably looking for bugs." Dave commented from the side.

Benedict nodded, agreeing with his hunch.

"We thought the same, luckily we never really record things that way." He said with a smile. "When we joined him in the dining room, we were surprised to see that he and his sister Louise had made up."

"It seems Lucius is not as smart if Louise isn't around." Camilla explained. "So he had to forgive her, she helped him plot his whole revenge plan, she wasn't about to let him just drop her."

"It was then that he started to make fun of you for your stupidity, something that annoyed us." Benedict said as he rolled his eyes.

"That's when Louise suggested that they use this distraction to start poaching your top suppliers." Benedict explained. "We wanted to get away to tell you, but he cornered us, insisting that we stay the night."

"We were worried that he had bugged our phones, so we didn't dare call you, it wasn't worth the risk," Camilla said, shaking her head vigorously.

"When Mae called Camilla, it was the perfect chance for us to get out." Benedict told them. "We quickly left and went to R Tower first. Luckily Adolfo was there trying to figure out a hack. So we gave him our phones and true enough they were bugged, so we got new ones."

"Did he get anything?" Cedric asked with a worried expression on his face. "I don't want him finding out personal information about you and blackmailing both of you. You siblings have already risked a lot for us."