Chapter 30
Once we reached his apartment door, Malone held out an arm to shield me from any potential horrors inside.
Cute that he thought I couldn’t handle myself.
But also sweet.
I could feel that the apartment was already empty, though.
Well, almost empty. Lucius Malone sat in the recliner, staring at a television that wasn’t turned on.
“Grandpa?”
“Where have you been, Tiberius?” he asked as he rotated the recliner to face us. Before Malone could answer him, he caught sight of me. “Ah. I see where you’ve been, and what you’ve been up to. I hope it was worth it.”
“Excuse me?”
“She’s in league with Blake’s wife,” he said, before adding under his breath, “Too bad. Ilikedher.”
“I’m right here, so you don’t have to talk about me in the third person,” I said. “And I’m not ‘in league’ with anyone.”
“Grandpa, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how it would be best if you turned yourself in. I know you were behind the money that’s missing.” The older man looked as though he’d aged ten years overnight.
“Turn myself in? I’ve been helping you find the money.”
The older man shook his head. “Blake showed me the reports. You may not have orchestrated that first cyberattack, but you’ve been profiting ever since, and you’ve tried to pin it all on him.”
Malone ran a hand through his hair. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Blake’s the one who’s been siphoning thousands of dollars from Malone Construction through fraudulent invoices and shell companies. I have—”
He paused, and I could see the moment he remembered that Blake had taken most of his equipment and destroyed much of the hard work he’d put into his nerdy number mural. “Ihadthe evidence.”
“You still do.” I tugged on his sleeve. “Remember Jarvis?”
“Oh, I could kiss you,” he said as he exhaled with relief. “My backups.”
“I’ll bring it to you,” I said as he turned to face his grandfather.
By the time I came back with the shoebox, he was showing his grandfather the walls in the second bedroom, how Blake had ruined his work.
“Well, at the very least, you’re repainting these walls,” Lucius said in a gruff voice.
“I will, I promise you, but I need you to believe me. I don’t know how he managed to manipulate the information as he did, but I have a feeling it was the SQL injection and—”
He lapsed into his forensic accountant jargon. Computer terminology wasn’t entirely foreign to me, but some of the business jargon was. Besides, I couldn’t be a help to him with any of that.
Think, Stella, think.
“How do I know you didn’t do this yourself to frame Blake?” Lucius asked, jarring me from my thoughts.
“Because ...” Malone couldn’t find the words because he would never do such a thing, but that wasn’t necessarily a defense that Lucius would accept.
“I have video of Blake breaking into this apartment,” I said, producing my phone.
“Breaking in?” asked Lucius.
“Well, he had a key, but still. He wasn’t supposed to be here, and he was skulking about like he knew it,” I said as I powered on my phone. Texts and calls came flying at me from Trista. I frowned but swiped those notifications away to find the video I’d saved.
