I am here!Griffin’s head pops up next to the window, and without further hesitation, I help him climb through it. He closes the window again, right when the light in the room is switched on. That was fucking close. I grab him and pull him further behind the house, towards the shadow of some trees.
“That was too close,” I mutter.
“Sorry, but I had to make sure to remove all my traces.”
I tug Griffin with me, far away from the so-called florist’s house. Half an hour later, and only when we are sitting in our car, I talk again.
“Alright,” I say. “Shoot.”
Griffin looks at me. “Hold your horses, Forest. The Excel file… I was only able to skim it, but it’sallbets. The guy is a bookmaker.”
“No way,” I mutter. “I mean, okay, that makes much more sense than him having a simple flower shop. I thought he was selling something, but…”
“It’s not just that he is a bookmaker.” Griffin grabs my arm, tugging at it frantically. “Okay, now listen! Granted, I wasn’t able to look at everything, but I swear I saw your mom’s name in the list!”
When we return to Martin and Rose, the two of them are still sitting together, juggling numbers. Rose looks up when she hears us entering the apartment. “You are back! Please tell me you were successful.”
“Even if you weren’t, we were,” Martin adds with a proud smile.
“You found something?” I ask, hurrying to where Rose is sitting, wrapping her in my arms from behind. I lean over her shoulder to peek at the screen of her tablet. She points at an Excel file.
“We analyzed all the weird-looking, smaller transactions that weren’t accounted for anywhere else, plus the regular big ones from your parents’ private account. Now brace yourself.“ She scrolls through the file, showing Griffin and me what the two of them have put together. “Let’s start with the transactions from the pack account; there are a lot that make sense. I studied the pack’s finances during the last two weeks, and many of them were easy to match; however… There were small transactions that seemingly went nowhere. These individual transactions alone aren’t necessarily much. They are small sums, sprinkled throughout the week. One alone doesn’t look suspicious. However, despite them being officially for pack expenses, they don’t show up anywhere.”
“And they all lead to the same account,” Martin says. “Funny, huh?”
“If you add them all together, it’s a hefty sum,” Rose adds. “And it’s not just that; the flow of money is unusual. It goes from the pack account to this other account and then to your parents’ private one.”
“From there, once a week they pay a sum to the—you probably guessed—florist,” Martins says.
“Crazy,” Griffin exclaims. “How much money are we talking about?”
“A lot,” Rose says. “We are still going through the numbers, but so far it’s 100k at least. Definitely more.” She looks at us expectantly. “You two look pretty smug, too.”
“We broke into the florist’s shop,” I say, “and Griffin found an Excel file on the guy’s notebook. The dude is a bookmaker.”
“Bets,” Rose mutters, exchanging a look with Martin. “That makes sense.”
“Actually, that makes a lot of sense,” he agrees. “More than gambling at a casino does.”
“I will send you the file,” Griffin says. “We need to scan it carefully, because guess what… I spotted our very own beloved Donna’s name there.”
“I knew she was full of shit,” Martin mutters.
“We need to compare the sums she’s bet, lost and won, from your Excel file with the numbers Martin and I put together,” I say. “That way, we can find out what she truly was up to.”
“She is gambling through bets,” I frown. “There is no way she didn’t lose money.” My stomach clenches in sudden anger. “She has been taking from the pack. I need to know the exact numbers.”
“I have something to suggest,” Griffin says. “Martin and I take over from here.”
“But—”
“You both need to go to sleep. You have the gala tomorrow evening, and you need to look the part and also be somewhat rested to pull it off.” Griffin nudges Martin. “We’ll be fine, won’t we?”
“Absolutely,” Martin reassures us. “The luna and I already analyzed the pack’s money flow. Now what’s left is the Excel file from the bookmaker.”
“I hate paperwork,” Griffin says. “But I know what I am looking for now. I am sure I can assist Martin well enough.”
Rose and I look at each other for a while, then I nod. “Alright, you have a point.” I take a deep breath, realizing how different it is to leave something in other people’s hands. I have told myself over and over again that I can trust these two men, but it’s hard to really feel it. I wasn’t even aware how much my trust in others was broken, by what my parents and Lissa did. The only one who I seem to have complete faith in is Rose.
