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“Don’t you go including me in your sweeping statement,” Steven protested, putting his hands up and taking a step back.
“I don’t control their behaviour,” Lucas said. “I just provide a focal point for the action.”
“I’d like to talk to Axel on my own for the moment,” I said. “What I have to tell him isn’t for sensitive young ears.”
Carlene whooped and applauded us off, even with Ashleigh Tanner loudly asking her to please show some decorum. I had decided I was going to err on the side of liking Carlene a little bit.
Axel extended his crooked arm towards me as the noise from behind us faded. I gave him a look to communicate my declining walking with him like we were on a date in some modern-day Jane Austen remake.
“So…” I wished I had accepted the invitation, because the way he was striding right now was annoyingly confident, and if I’d been holding on to him I would at least have been able to cramp his style. “You’ve put the pieces together.”
“I bet you got him to let you look at my marks too, you sadistic demon, so you must know I’m not that stupid.”
He gave me an eyebrow-shrug. “The thing you should be worrying about right now is whether anyone else will ever get a chance to look at your marks again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Axel didn’t answer immediately. He just kept walking, forcing me to keep pace alongside him. I had plenty of time to look around and catch curious stares from people I knew all over the place. I was going to have a lot of questions to answer, and the thing was I didn’t think I’d have any answers to give.
Finally he cleared his throat. “You might be disappointed to hear the board that handles who gets to say they’ve graduated high school in our state has not been doing a very good job of managing security on their databases. Specifically, they don’t have offsite backups at all. Everything is on the one machine… and that’s a bit awkward when that particular machine isn’t well-secured. Someone’s entire academic history could go missing in a crisis.”
I stopped walking, but he didn’t, so I had to start moving again to keep up with him. I needed to talk fast on this one, anyway. “Are you seriously threatening to make my results disappear entirely? That’s not going to work, I’ve got records of those results, and I’m sure Burgundy has their own database they’ve been keeping track in.”
His smile didn’t even wobble, which told me he’d predicted this response. “It’s true, even I can’t wave my hand and magically erase you from time. But I can waste your time… rather a lot of it. I wouldn’t expect the same organisation that can’t even secure their critically important system to be quick about re-integrating your data. Is time really something you have to waste at this point in your life?”
“I can tell you’ve got a point to make here.”
“Your bank account isn’t looking healthy at the moment, Aileen,” said Axel. “Which would be fine, but nor is your father’s, and the mortgage payments keep on coming out. You need to graduate without incident and move on to something better before there’s a major crisis.”
Matt had been holding out on me. He’d been looking at my bank statements? Dad’s bank statements? Matt was probably hoping that didn’t get spotted at all.
“In case you’re wondering,” Axel added, “I have a family friend associated with the bank who was more than happy to look into a few little things for me.”
“That’s so illegal, and I am going to make a complaint with my bank—”
“And tell them what? There’s absolutely no evidence that anything happened, as I’m sure you know. Even if there was, a bank is not going to be interested in your cute little complaint. They don’t get that much money out of you as a customer, why should they even take your call?”
“Oh yes, very silly of me to think that any organisation should treat all of its clients equally in terms of complaints, whether they represent a big or small account.”
I nearly tripped when Axel clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s okay, we all make these errors in judgement once in a while. What matters is that you can turn this situation around very quickly, if you need to.”
“By letting you have access to my dad to bully him into handing over his invention to you.”
He made me stumble with a friendly shoulder bump this time. “You learn fast. Now my availability is usually low, but I’m going to make an exception in this situation and try to work around your father’s schedule. Not that I’m aware of many responsibilities in his life.”
I had come to negotiate for Matt’s reputation, but I was seeing that I had nothing to offer Axel he would value. My only leverage at this point was to not let him think he could overwhelm me so easily. “You can see him in hell, Axel,” I told him.
He shook his head. “You really aren’t getting this, Aileen. If hell is the only place I can negotiate this deal from, then I’m quite happy to drag you both there. You should give me your attention while you have a chance.”
When a laugh burst from me, he was startled, then annoyed. “This isn’t a joke in any sense, Aileen.”
Well of course he was the one who really didn’t get it. I’d been living in a kind of hell basically all my life, as long as I could remember. It wasn’t like what some friends I knew had gone through, but there was no doubt about it: loving someone you couldn’t help to get his stuff together was a tortured experience. Having your digital identity screwed with by some entitled idiot didn’t really compare.
If Axel thought he was going to bring me to my knees with these weak indirect threats, he was about to be disappointed. This was just one more setback in my life. “What’s going on between us has nothing to do with Matt. You should fix it… you need to fix it, or I am going to make sure you get messed up with all this dirt you’ve chucked at him.”
The smile he shot me would have been cute if I hadn’t already realised he was an absolute creep. “It’s funny, I wouldn’t have thought either of you was the other’s type.”
There was something about the way he said it that had me staring at him closely, trying to figure out if there was a hint behind it. Matt hadn’t told me how Axel figured out about his… thing. Did he also know about what I’d told Matt earlier? I felt fine with telling whoever I wanted, but it was different when someone else was taking this information without my permission.
