She gags behind me, following me to the door. “What happened on your London trip?”
“Nothing.”
“Well … something did. You’ve been weird since you got back. ”
“Nope.”
“Did you go to Scotland?”
I wince. “Mia.”
“Well, Beatrice Jones said that you showed up at the Sorrowsong Ball and then I saw someone posted a photo of you and—”
I hate that everyone seems to care what I do. Hate that my appearance at the ball has only prompted more unkindness toward Ophelia. It’s not exactly helpful when I’m trying to convince herthat things are better when we’re together. “By engaging with that content you’re only perpetuating the cycle we’re in.”
Her tone is more serious now, and she looks a lot more like her twin sister all of a sudden. Evie has always been the more pragmatic of the two. Mia … well, Mia once threw a boiled egg at Dad, so … not so pragmatic. “Well, maybe if you talked to us more, we wouldn’t be forced to look for details of your private life on random websites.”
I turn to face her, but she’s already stomping back up the stairs.
BRENDAN VIDEO CALLSme as soon as I’ve sat down at my desk and accepted a steaming coffee and a concerned glance from Jacqueline. “Hello?”
“Hey, one sec, bear with me. I’m onMinecraft.” His eyes are focused somewhere else, mouth in a determined line.
“At eleven a.m.?”
“Yeah, at eleven a.m. What time would you rather I did it?”
“Not when you’ve called me.”
“You were a lot less of a dick before you were a CEO, Corbeau. You’re all the same. If you didn’t pay ridiculous money, I’d be long gone.”
I wince at that. Was my father like me before he became the man he is now?
“Tell me what you know.”
He ruffles his hair beneath his black hoodie, looking a bit uncomfortable. “I’ve traced the article leak.”
Fuck.I’ve been so hyper-focused on my father’s whereabouts, I almost let myself forget about the article. “And?”
“It’s a college buddy of mine.”
Confusion and frustration swamp me in equal measure. “Who?”
“She works in tech, like me. She knows what she’s doing. Buried her tracks so well that it took me months to find her.”
She’s a hacker, basically.
“Who paid her?”
He throws up a hand, lips pressed together. “She won’t say. It would be a real breach of the unspoken code for me to keep asking. You wouldn’t want me disclosing that I work for you to strangers. We all respect each other’s work.”
My life is being fucked over by some hacker bro-code. “We need to find out who it was.”
“I’m working on it, butman, her drives are hard to get into.”
If I was my father, I’d have the information tortured out of her.
But I’m not.
