Bedding the Billionaire (Book 3) (Legacy Collection) (38 page)

He never felt sorry for himself when he was adding another figure to his income bracket.

They say that money can’t make you h
appy,
but it had made his life a whole lot more bearable.
Until quite recently he would have said there wasn’t a single thing he would change about his life.

Now there was only one.

He wanted Lil in it.
Lil and Colby.

He didn’t want to wake up Monday morning in his house if neither of them were there.
He wouldn’t have to, though, because he’d already decided that they would be coming home wit
h him at the end of the weekend. Lil would accept his proposal once she thought it through.

She’d have to wait
to wait, though.
His parents were the more pressing matter at hand.
“I’ll talk to them, Dom, but get ready to aggressively begin the search for help again on Monday.”

Jake braced himself and opened the door to the study, “Judy. Jim. What a pleasant surprise.”

His mother broke her conversation with her husband and Victor Andrade when she heard her son’s voice.
At first glance, she looked
much the same as she always had;
except
perhaps
that
h
er dark, shoulder
length
hair
sported a bit
more gray
.
Her
signature
cream knit sweater and tan loose trousers
were expensive, yet understated and unadorned with jewelry.
Although both of his parents had been born into wealthy families, neither had ever looked the p
art; preferring to spend their money on their research rather than any of the earthly possessions most people
collected
.
His father
’s gray hair was too long for the style he
’d
attempted to brush it
into, indicating that he’d probably forgotten his last trim appointment. He
was dressed in the same
dark blue dinner jacket and
purple,
striped
tie that he
’d
likely worn
to every
formal
event
in the past twenty years.
Not much had changed in the three years since Jake had last seen them.

“Jake,
”
his mother said in greeting.
She didn’t walk over to give him a hug.

He hadn’t expected her to, so really there was no reason for the twinge of disappointment he felt.
In about thirty seconds
,
his parents co
uld do what no one else could;
they coul
d make him feel insignificant.
He joined the group and shook the hand his father offered.

His fathe
r studied his face for a moment
then asked,
“
Are you ok
ay
,
Jake
?
”

Jake touched his one of the bruises on his cheek and said, “It looks worse than it is.”

Victor slapped Jake on the back and laughed, “
An
d better than the other guy,
si
?
”

Jake smiled before meeting his mother’s look of disapproval.
Even though she said nothing,
h
e could
hear her voice in his head.
We do not
c
ondone physical violence, Jake.

He sighed.

His mother said, “Victor has been filling us in on what has been going on.
I’m surprised that your company was using such a weak
symmetric key encryption algorithm
for your access codes.”

Jake defended their practice.
“
Yes, many of our
protocols use symmetric encryption, but our
more sensitive data
tran
s
fers utilize
an as
y
m
metric
,
hybrid cipher.
I
t’s perfectly acceptable
to
use
the more secure
to initiate access and
not to
relay the bulk of the data.”

“You wouldn’t be in this situation today if you had used quantum keys,” his mother chided.

“Your mother is right, Jake,” his father concurred.

“
That wasn’t my decision.
I am not a programmer.
”

His mother interrupted him, “You should be. You’re wasting your talent. You are far too intelligent to be Dominic
Corisi’s
lackey.”

Every muscle in his body tensed and his
reaction could not be contained.
“I am a multi-billionaire.
I employ hundreds of thousands of people all across the globe. Countries have entered the technological race because of the adva
nces I’ve helped bring to them.
I’m sorry if I don’t want to sit in a lab somewhere
,
tinkering with protons until I in
vent the perfect encryption key or, having given up on that, take up farming in some New England redneck town.
I’m not you.”

“Show your parents the respect they deserve, Jake,” Victor said in a stern tone.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Jake snarled.

Victor started to say something else, but Judy stopped him with a
placating
wave of her hand. “
No, Victor, he’s right.
I didn’t mean to belittle your accomplishments, Jake.
Of course we’re proud that you’re rich.
We just hoped for so much more from you.
”

The verbal pat on the head did not
lesse
n
Jake’s temper
, bu
t Jake resolved
to
.
He took a deep, calming breath.
His parents would never see the value
of
what of what he did.
It shouldn’t bother him.
Inviting them this weekend had been a profound waste of time and he was about to prove it.
“We have
just over
three weeks until o
ur server goes online in China.
Do you think you and Jim can find the cause of the
compromised
codes?”

His father answered, “We won’t know for sure until
we’re
given access to the program, but it sounds like there is something else going on.
Some of your patches seemed to work initially and then were corrupted?
That
hints at either a Trojan virus or some back door access code.
If
your
origi
nal hacker was good enough, those codes
can be difficult to locate.
Not impossible, but the process might be time consuming.
There is
no way to say if
we’ll meet your deadline.
It’d be a whole lot easier if we knew what we were dealing with.”

“Just say you can’t do it,” Jake goaded.

Judy Walton walked over to her son
and raised a hand to touch her son’s check, but Jake pulled his head away from her touch.
She let her hand drop to her side. “We want to help you.”

Jake ran a hand through his normally pristine hair, “But you’ve been out of the field for a long time, I know. Dominic should never have asked you
.”

Jim joined his wife, putting an arm lightly around her waist in quiet support. “Do you know what we’re working on,
Jake
?”

“Farming techniques?” Jake said dismissively.

His father shook his head.
“Far from it.”
He looked over at Victor as if assessing if he could be trusted with certain information.
He said, “We’re
bio-engineering
th
e next generation of
encryption–organic keys–
encoding information at the DNA level
. Imagine having chemical access codes stored within your very own cells.
Codes
that remain
intact even as the strands change as a result of breeding.
Technology could truly be something you leave your children.”

Victor
waved an excited hand in the air and
said, “That’s impossible. You can’t add codes to DNA without changing their function.”

Jim countered
with a humble shrug.
“It’s impossible in animals so far, but we’ve proven it can work with certain plants.”

DNA encryption?
His parents were wandering further from reality than he’d thought.
“Another world-
changing discovery?
Aren’t you afraid Victor will steal the idea now that you’ve shared it?”

His mother looked
over her shoulder at
her husband and then back at her son.
The lines
of her face deepened with emotion.
“Your father and I have come to an awful realization
recently–
we’re not going to be here forever.
We’ve spent some time re-evaluating our priorities.
”

Jake sighed impatiently
and half-turned away from her
.
“Judy, don’t take this as harshly as it sounds, but I don’t have time to entertain your mid-life crisis
right now.”

His father nodded
, but his tone was surprisingly firm
.
“We probably
deserve
that comment, son, but give your mother a
few more minutes of your time.”

It was really only Victor’s presence that held Jake’s tongue.
“Fine.
I’m listening.”