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Fuck, how am I this lucky that she knows me this well and still loves me?
I plant a kiss into her hair and shift her weight to my left thigh so I can access one of my keyboards. “I accessed Alfie’s system, but I held back digging in until I was positive he didn’t know I was in it. I didn’t want him shutting anything down or erasing stuff, and he would have if he had known. In the meantime, your mom had sent your father’s laptop. In going through things on here, I found a ton of evidence of mass financial indiscretion by Alfie. It was a ton of things, from acting as a threat actor and intercepting a third-party payment, to briefly shorting stock, to presenting false and manufactured financial reports to the board that would impact the stock price. He embezzled money while also committing a ton of SEC violations, but he did a brilliant job at covering his crimes and also showing them as legitimate financial gains and losses and even created data to back it all up.”
“But if you discovered this on my father’s laptop, he clearly knew about it.”
“Correct. Your father is who had discovered that Alfie was the third-party event actor and went from there.”
Her brows scrunch. “I’m not sure what that means.”
“Alfie hacked the email system of a third-party vendor company that Monroe used and sent out an invoice to Monroe acting as the company but using a bogus payment system. Basically, he intercepted what would have been a legitimate transaction and rerouted the payment to a numbered offshore account. Monroe paid it, not realizing it wasn’t legitimate, and weeks later, the intercept was discovered. I’m not sure what tipped your father off that it was Alfie, but that led to your father secretly investigating Alfie for about a year as he built a case against his, at that time, CFO and best friend. Essentially, Alfie embezzled money from Monroe, acting as another company.”
Georgia’s eyes are wider than Rebels Field as she grapples with this. “That’s… insane. I mean, it’s just… wow. Alfie did this? I’ve known him my entire life. I don’t know how to wrap my head around that.” She pauses, thinking this through, and then her eyes flash. “But wait, if this was going on for over a year, I was with Ezra during that time.”
“Yes. You were. I’ll get into some of that in a moment, but what I have to tell you next is going to be very difficult for you to hear.”
Her body is a marble statue. The back of her head is all that’s visible to me as she stares at the screens, one by one.
“Just… fuck.” She emits a rough sigh. “Just tell me.”
“Your mom was having an affair with Alfie.”
I squeeze her tighter as she sucks in the harshest gasp I’ve ever heard. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Just listen,” I tell her. “So, per your father’s documents, that’s what was going on. He didn’t trust Alfie, and so he was having him investigated. But, because Alfie is a hacker and your father was not, your father didn’t get access to what I have access to now. He was flying blind, picking up scraps Alfie was foolish enough to leave behind while having him followed and privately investigated.”
“I can’t…” She shakes her head.
“You still with me?”
“Yes. Keep going.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I need to hear this. All of it.”
“Okay. So what your father knew was that your mother and Alfie were having an affair. What he didn’t know was that Alfie drugged your mother at a party, got her extremely high, and then had sex with her at the party in a bathroom.”
She starts to shake. “That motherfucker!”
I kiss her neck, holding her as close as I can. “After that, he threatened to come out publicly about it. He had pictures that weren’t the kindest, and he promised to ruin her name and her marriage if she didn’t continue the affair and report back on your father’s doings. She put him off as much as she could. Through this, much like his son, he became obsessed with her. At least that’s what his private texts to her from his real phone show, though he denies drugging her and says it was all her, which I believe is more for proof purposes than fact.”
“Jesus, fuck, Lenox.” Her fingertips touch her trembling lips. “Is he… is he still… are they.”
“No. As far as I can tell from their texts, she hasn’t had sex with him since your father died. Alfie was threatening to tell your father and the media that the perfect Harmony Monroe had an affair with her husband’s best friend if she didn’t continue to sleep with him. I have more on that too. But all your father knew was that she was having an affair, and he had planned to confront her and Alfie—along with his financial indiscretions—shortly after the wedding.”
She climbs off my lap and starts to pace back and forth.
“Keep going.”
I spin in my chair to face her as she paces. “I believe that’s why your father changed his will in secret. It also seems that Alfie believed all along that your mom was the sole beneficiary of Monroe and knew that your father was investigating him. Alfie wanted your dad gone, and Monroe and your mom as his. He gave Ezra twenty grand to hire someone to take your father out.”
She pauses mid-step and glares at me as if I just told her the sun was about to explode and the world was going to be thrust into an ice age. “Twenty grand. You told me Alfie gave that to Ezra, and he paid off a bookie.”
“He did. Ezra was in deep and hiding it from the world. He took the twenty grand and paid off a bookie who is also a mafia boss of sorts. Alfie and Ezra promised this bookie two hundred and fifty grand to pay off all his debts if the bookie killed your father after you and Ezra were married. Only it seems the mob boss didn’t wait for reasons unknown.”
She collapses onto the sofa, and I climb down off the chair and crawl to her until my hands are on her knees and I’m staring straight at her.
She looks sick, her skin void of all color, her eyes glassy and red. Her hands rake through her hair, and then she just sits here, holding her head, completely overwrought with this. “My dad was murdered.”
