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She cranes a perfectly shaped eyebrow in acknowledgment, and I wonder if I’ve made the right choice.
Doubt is a debilitating emotion. Doubt makes you weak, it makes you question your own mind. Even when you know the right choice, the friction to make that choice holds you back.
The pain and heartache that comes from strength of character is the price you pay for your morals.
Sometimes, it’s easier to give in to your fear.
I hate Alex for what I’ve become, but right now, I hate myself more.
I leave Addisyn in charge of Alex, with the hope I can pull off a scheme to finally set us free. Because that’s all any of us want.
It’s what I read in London when she spoke of her patient; her desire to be free—free of the constraint of her world, free to be with Grayson. For them to live their life on their terms.
Alex is a threat to that.
He threatens to expose Grayson, and no matter how well organized Alex’s plan is, we can’t risk failing. We can’t take any more lives.
If I succeed, I can deliver freedom for all of us without becoming the monster Alex tried to create.
40
CHECKMATE
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My phone vibrates in my back pocket.
I dig it out to read the text:
He’s starting to get ripe.
Aggravation knots my shoulders at the countless interruptions. I stretch and fire off a reply text to Addisyn.
Hose him down.
We’re talking in code, I suppose. If anyone ever finds it necessary to comb through my data, I’m simply discussing a smelly dog with a woman who works at a kennel. I did manage to take this into account before I decided to lock a man in a cage and embark on a reckless mission to frame one of the most dangerous men in NYC.
It’s taken four days to orchestrate a strategy which ties Brewster to Alex’s victims and…mine. Ultimately deciding to frame Brewster for Ericson’s murder was the part which took the longest. I had an internal battle to wage.
However, for the frame job to be clear-cut, there can’t be any loose ends or victims sharing the same murder methodology as the other victims. Every death has to be linked to Brewster’s drug ring.
How I did it:
I meticulously scoured Ericson’s financial reports and bank statements, highlighting any transactions connected to Brewster’s shell companies. The obscene number of 0s Ericson was moving for Brewster made me realize Alex was right in the regard that Brewster would come after the person who killed his financial advisor.
He would have to know thewhy, and if that person had knowledge of Brewster and Ericson’s dealings, whether for blackmail or another nefarious reason. It was simply too risky for Brewster to ignore, but also, there was money piling up in accounts with no one to move it.
This is where the motive comes in.
With one smartly coded program, all those dirty 0s were transferred into one of Brewster’s legitimate accounts right here in the city.
Any transaction over 10k sets off a red flag with the bank and has to be reported to the IRS and investigated, which a savvy businessman like Brewster would know, of course. So it couldn’t be an amateur move on his part; it had to be a failsafe set up by Ericson in the event of his untimely demise.
I didn’t have to do too much backtracking and overriding of Ericson’s accounts. He was already stealing money from his client. I just had to make it more obvious.
So when the lead detective on the case was alerted of the banking activity surrounding one of his suspects, it didn’t take long for a warrant to be issued and a search of Brewster’s penthouse to be underway, where the murder weapon was retrieved.
That concludes round one.
