Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Because with me she had a better thing going,” he said. “With me, I’d just created a tech company that would net millions.”
“So she stayed with you so she could get a steady income?” I guessed.
“Exactly,” he agreed. “She’s been funneling millions out of my company for years now. Right now, she’s up to about five hundred and ninety-five million. All of it tax-free.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
“She gives half of her income to those guys and keeps half of it herself in an offshore bank account,” Boone said. “But we’re not the only job that she’s running. She’s also sucking dry all of the charities that she’s a chairman of. She funnels off the top a little bit at a time.”
“She’s up to about seven hundred million off of all of her charities,” Denver added. “She also has her fingers in a lot of pies. A lot of pies that are financially sound and won’t notice that she’s stealing from them.”
“Whoa,” I breathed.
“A couple of years ago, when one of the guys that she originally hooked up with wanted more than she wanted to give, she hired a hit man and had him killed,” Denver continued. “The one guy left is really good with computers. A black hat hacker that saw no issues in Gail’s methods.”
“So what now?” I finally asked. “How does all of this work?”
And, just sayin’, I still thought my loss was greater than all of that.
I could hate Gail for what she’d done to Sawyer and Boone in general. But I was forever going to be gutted for what she’d done to me.
She’d stolen something precious. Something completely and utterly innocent.
I would never, ever forgive her for that.
But it was nice to see that Boone had finally cottoned on to what was going on with his own family.
That didn’t fix the past, but it definitely helped toward the future.
Maybe I could trust him with our daughter.
Maybe he wouldn’t let that crazy bitch anywhere near her.
“We also think that Felicia isn’t the baby that she was pregnant with.”
That bomb went off, silent but deadly.
Sawyer’s words felt like gunshots in the otherwise silent room.
My brows were high as I breathed, “What?”
“We think that she kidnapped Felicia when she was an infant.” Denver moved toward the middle of the room and took a seat on Sawyer’s desk.
Sawyer moved the cup of pencils before he could knock them over.
“How does that even happen?” Eddy spoke her first words since they started.
“At first, I thought that Felicia was just another child that was Gail’s but not mine.” Sawyer sighed. “But we found out that Gail visits a girl in Bear Pass once a week.”
“And she looks just like Dad,” Boone added. “Same honey-colored eyes. Same copper-colored hair. Same skin tone. Same nose.”
I opened my mouth and closed it, unsure what to say.
“Why?”
“Control and collateral,” Denver added, his voice grumpy and cold. “We think that she’s insurance in case Sawyer ever finds out everything.”
“Why? Who raised her? Who is Felicia?”
“Gail sees her a bunch, actually,” Sawyer admitted. “Has since she was an infant. But she lives with the hacker, Kurt Pruitt.”
“Ida Bell Pruitt?” I squeaked.
They all looked at me. “You know her?”
“We graduated with her, Boone,” I pointed out. “She was that girl that always got bullied for being a nerd. The redhead that got shoved into a locker once a week by all the high school bullies.”
Boone’s eyes narrowed as anger lit his eyes.
Sawyer cursed.
Denver was the only one who didn’t look surprised.
“And Felicia? Where does she fit in all this?”
“We think she knows,” Sawyer sighed. “Not at first. At first, she was just a little girl. My little girl. But now, we think that she’s helping Kurt and Gail run the cons. Didn’t you see her brand-new Mercedes G-Wagon? I didn’t buy that for her.”
“Whoa,” Eddy mumbled.
“So what is it that you’re doing now?” I asked. “Why are you telling me all of this?”
Boone leveled me with a look that said, ‘I know you know why.’
I looked down at my lap. “Because the only way to fix this is to get her out of my life. We’ve spent the last two years tracing the money, but as we said, Kurt’s a really freakin’ good hacker.”
“What about Apollo?”
Apollo was the man that’d helped all of the men that’d once been in prison get out. He’d planned out new lives for them. Created new identities. Established a history in the town. Found them the Dixie Wardens MC.
I was probably one of a couple thousand townspeople that would’ve known the truth when the men had arrived due solely to the fact that I’d had a tie-in to the club. I knew the members, though not well seeing as Boone had joined after we were a thing. But Denver had always been a part of them, and he hadn’t shied away from bringing his club members to the family functions that Sawyer had put on.