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“Is that why you’re here?”
His quivering voice lacked all the bravado it did this past weekend when he was hitting on every woman with a pulse as if it were his right.
“If that’s the case, I don’t?—”
I threw my head back and laughed. “The money I invested with you is peanuts to me. I understand the unpredictable nature of the market. There are ups and downs.” I pinched my lips together. “Of course, I’d prefer the downs not be because my portfolio manager traded on bad information.”
“Then…”
“You were right.” I lowered myself into the leather chair opposite him.
“I was?”
“Yes.” I gestured to the bottle on the coffee table. “Do you mind if I help myself?”
He gave a confused nod. I doubted he’d tell me no, considering I currently had a gun pointed directly at him.
“Ididplan this,” I explained as I poured some scotch into a rocks glass. But instead of taking a sip, I simply swirled the amber liquid around, watching it dance and sparkle in the light.
“I purposefully left the draft press release out for you to see, knowing you wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation.” I hesitated. “At least Ihopedyou wouldn’t. Hoped things hadn’t changed that much in the past five years.” A small smirk tugged at the corner of my lips. “Luckily, they hadn’t. You still can’t resist the allure of using inside information to your advantage just to add a few zeroes to your bank account.”
“I…” He licked his lips, the trembles in his body becoming more pronounced. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s the same reason you agreed to Liam’s plan to kill Samuel and frame Jonah for it, isn’t it? Even made a statement that you remembered seeing the weapon allegedly used to kill him in Jonah’s backpack.”
“I don’t?—”
“Oh, come on, Alton. No need to lie now. I know everything. I know how Liam told you all about ImageScape’s offer to buy Cloud Hero for quite a pretty penny, which would certainly increase their stock. So you went all in on ImageScape, didn’t you? Bought up as many shares as you could. Just like you did last week with GeoCom. But neither of you expected that Samuel wouldn’t want to sell out. You couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t accept an offer that would make him a billionaire. And you certainly didn’t expect he’d want to go in the opposite direction, turn Cloud Hero into an employee-owned company.”
The more I spoke, the more uneasy Alton became, his expression growing paler by the second.
“And you couldn’t have that, could you? You both stood to make a fortune — Liam by selling, and you by the increased value of all the ImageScape stocks you’d already bought, which would allow you to pay dividends to some of your investors so they wouldn’t get suspicious you’d been stealing from them. So you agreed to kill him and cover it up.”
“I…” He shook his head. “We had nothing to do with that. Some loser kid did it.”
I shot to my feet and rushed toward him, shoving my gun against his temple. “Loser kid?” I seethed, unable to control my anger. “Let me tell you something about Jonah Pruitt. He had more integrity in his pinky finger than you have in your entire body. He was someone who was willing to stand up for what was right, regardless of what might happen to him.” My voice thundered through the room, the windows seeming to rattle with my fury. “He was trying to break the cycle. Hoped to go to college and become a computer engineer. But you assholes pinned a murder on him instead. Then you made sure he was dead before he could prove his innocence.”
“I…”
“Tell me I’m wrong!” I roared, my finger tightening on the trigger. “Go ahead, Alton. Lie, and see what happens.”
“H-how did you know Jonah?” he asked after several long moments. “Were you friends with Samuel?”
I brought my face within an inch of his, wanting to look into his eyes when he learned the truth.
“No, Alton. IamSamuel.”
Any remaining color in his face instantly drained, his breaths bursting in and out.
“You can’t be. It’s not possible. You’re dead.”
“They never found my body. Did they?”
“But the blood. They said?—”
“That no one could have survived that kind of wound.” I straightened, pacing in front of him. “You’re right. Ishouldn’thave survived. But someone found me. Patched me up. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the Good Samaritan I thought he was. Instead, he took me to what I can only describe as a living hell where I had to either kill or be killed. I’ll let you guess which I chose.”
“Please, Sammy.”
