“Why would you do that?” Alexei demanded.
“Heard you were looking for me. I wanted to get our inevitable confrontation out of the way. I set all of this up, obviously.” That was a silly lie, but Alexei might believe it. He apparently didn’t think she was very smart.
To think Sejal had been honored when Alexei had dated her, way back when. She’d grown up with a father who chased money and power. Of course she’d assumed that was what she needed in a man. But Alexei had turned out to be weak and untrustworthy. “So what do you want from me?” she repeated.
“I want what’s mine.”
“What’s what?”
“The password.”
She squinted at him. “What?”
“I know you took it. I’ll admit, I was surprised you had the balls, or the ability to pull it off, but you did it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The necklace,” Alexei enunciated. “With the password.”
Wait a minute. Talk about déjà vu. “The password. To a crypto account?”
“So you suddenly do know what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said slowly. “What do you know about it?”
“I know that that’s my fucking money. I couldn’t access it while the others were still alive, but it’s mine, I earned it.” Alexei leaned forward aggressively. He stopped when Krish gave a warning growl.
The pieces slowly started to click together for Sejal. Alexei must have put the millions he’d stolen from his terrible business associates in crypto, and then put the password in the necklace.
Her parents had originally stolen that necklace fromAlexei?
“How did it take you two years to realize that the necklace was missing?” she asked.
“You know very well that you had your dear old dad swap it with a near-perfect forgery. Oh, your family is good, Sejal, but you did something very foolish.”
Sunil. He’d been good at forgeries. He must have given her father a dummy to swap out.
Damn it all to hell.
“You’ve said enough, Alexei,” Viktor warned.
“No, no. Let him keep talking.” If there was anything she remembered about Alexei, it was how much he liked to hear his own voice. “What did I do that was so foolish?”
“Last month, someone moved a huge sum of money out of my account and into another one.” He glared at her. “These transactions are public. You think I wouldn’t find out? You think my old partners wouldn’t eventually find out? Even from jail?”
Dad, what were you thinking?
“I don’t have your necklace,” Sejal said quietly. Déjà vu for real. She’d said these exact words to her mother two years ago. “And I didn’t withdraw your money. I’ll admit, my parents stole it from you. But I was pretty sure it was seized by the government when my mom was arrested.”
“Loose diamonds,” Krish said. His gaze was still trained on the men, but he shot her a sideways look. Some of his color had returned. “Now that I think back to it, the report said Rushali was found with loose diamonds. Not a diamond necklace.”
Sejal had tried so hard not to think about those terrible few days that she’d dropped the ball by not following up to find out what happened.
No wonder Sunil had been asking her about windfalls. Hell, he must have seen that the enormous fortune had been accessed, just like Alexei had. “Well, I didn’t take it.”
“Who did, then?”
Sejal tried not to gasp, but she could tell by Krish’s slight shift that the same realization had come to him.
