Seven narrowed his eyes. “Why does it sound like you don’t believe that?”
She just shrugged, now refusing to make eye contact.
“You’re dating, aren’t you?” Enzo pressed.
She didn’t deny it. She only shrugged again. “I guess you could call it that.”
“Does his wife know?” Seven guessed.
Now, Brioni glared at him. “He’s divorced. I’m not a homewrecker.”
Enzo tapped the arm of his chair with one finger. “Does he pay for this townhouse?”
“Is that a crime?” Brioni snapped. A sneeze punctured the edge of her anger and made her sound smaller.
“It is if he’s using embezzled funds to pay for it,” Enzo said flatly.
Seven leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Or the money he earned trafficking the women he was supposed to help.”
“It’s not what it looks like.” Her voice went thin and rushed. “He’s helping those women. He gets them jobs, helps them relocate, gives them brand-new lives under different names so their abusers can’t find them or their children again.” Tears tracked down her cheeks, and she swiped at them with a crumpled tissue.
Seven couldn’t tell if the tears were from a head cold or from grief over someone she loved enough to commit crimes for. He tried to picture this Grant person. He was sure he’d met him at some point, but he was drawing a blank. He couldn’t imagine he was worth all this.
“That’s what he told you?” Seven asked, lip curling.
“And you believed him?” Enzo added, his tone hard.
“It’s the truth!” she shot back, then shrank under the blanket again, eyes darting to the hallway like she expected someone to come barreling through at any moment. “Isn’t it?”
“Brioni,” Enzo said, his voice taking on that smooth cadence he used when he was cross-examining a witness. The one he used to lure them into a false sense of security. It was sexy as hell. “You seem like a nice woman who maybe got mixed up in something bigger than you knew. Let’s go back to the beginning and see if we can piece this together. Okay?”
She hesitated, then nodded, reaching for her mug. She sipped and made a face before setting it down. “I need more tea.”
She shrugged off the blanket and shuffled into the kitchen, hitting the kettle’s switch with a thumb that trembled. Enzo and Seven exchanged a look and followed. She gestured to the bar stools pushed under the island. Enzo pulled one out and offered it to Seven, then settled on the other.
“You were the one who dumped those files onto that thumb drive, right?” Seven asked. “You framed my mother.”
Tears leaked instantly. “I—I panicked.”
“Did Grant tell you to do it?” Seven pressed.
“No, I just… I was worried they wouldn’t think she was framing me just with the files they had. I wanted to make sure they didn’t suspect me.”
She bit her bottom lip, like she realized she was trying to garner sympathy from her victim’s son.
“So, you were embezzling money for the company?” Enzo asked.
Brioni’s answer was a messy nod and a shake at the same time. “I was, but not for the reason you think.”
Enzo steepled his fingers together on the counter. “Did you do it for your own self-interest, or did Grant somehow coerce you into doing it?”
Seven’s brow lifted, and he waited for the altruistic justification for stealing from a charity.
“Grant asked me to…siphon money from WERC to help those women start new lives,” Brioni said, the words tumbling out. “He told me it was the only way. That charity oversight and donors made it impossible to do the work properly. That to truly protect them, we needed new passports, new identities… Things that cost money.”
“You did it because he said it was necessary?” Seven’s voice was quiet and flat, disbelief wrapped in accusation.
“He showed me pictures,” she said, clutching her empty mug like it was an anchor. “Former clients. Smiling women with apartments and jobs. He said they were safe. He said we were saving them.”
