Chapter 55 The Millions in the Walls
Aria POV
The air in the boardroom felt like it was getting thinner as Mr. Sterling pulled up a new document on the screen, and I watched as a series of bank logos and transaction numbers appeared in a neat, clinical rows that made my heart race.
It was a digital statement for an offshore account located in a country I couldn't even point to on a map, and yet there was my full legal name and my social security number printed at the top of the page as if I had opened it myself. The balance at the bottom was a number that didn't even look real to me, because three million dollars was more money than everyone I had ever known combined would earn in ten years, and the board members were all staring at it like it was a bloody weapon I had dropped on the floor.
"We tracked the source of these funds back to a shell company used by the Iron Fang leadership, and the first deposit of five hundred thousand dollars hit this account exactly two hours after the first child in the clubhouse fell ill," Sterling said, and he leaned back in his chair with a cold look of triumph as if he had already won the case and was just waiting for the guards to haul me away.
"It’s a very simple equation, Aria, because you provided the test subjects for their new toxin, and they provided you with enough money to never have to bake a loaf of bread for the rest of your life."
"I don't even have a passport, so how would I know how to set up an offshore account in the Caymans?" I asked, but my voice felt small against the weight of the fake evidence they were piling up against me.
Before anyone could answer, the heavy mahogany doors at the end of the room swung open with a loud bang, and I saw Delilah Hart walking toward the table with a look of pure disgust on her face that made me realize things were about to get much worse.
She was dressed in a suit that probably cost more than my entire apartment, and she didn't even look at the board members as she marched straight toward the empty chair across from me. She ignored Jax and the security guards entirely, because her only focus was on making sure that I was thoroughly destroyed in front of the people who controlled the city's power.
"I told my brother that bringing a stray into the house would end in a disaster, but even I didn't think he would be stupid enough to let a professional honey-pot sleep under the same roof as our most sensitive data," Delilah said, and she leaned over the table so she could look me right in the eye.
"A girl from the gutters doesn't just stumble into my brother's bed by accident, Aria, because you were bought and paid for by our enemies to find his weaknesses and tear the Hart family apart from the inside."
"I’m not a honey-pot, Delilah, and I’m definitely not a professional anything except a baker who got caught in the middle of your family’s war," I replied, but she just laughed and turned toward the executives with a dismissive wave of her hand.
"She’s good, I’ll give her that, but the act is getting old now that we’ve seen the bank statements and the encrypted emails," Delilah told the board, and then she turned back to me with a sneer.
"Did you really think Grayson would choose you over his own pack and his own blood once he saw that you were the one who helped poison those kids? You’re a liability, and by the time we’re done with this hearing, you’ll be lucky if you only end up in a federal prison instead of being handled by our internal security teams."
I looked at Jess, who was nodding along with everything Delilah was saying, and I realized that the scale of this frame-up was way bigger than just a few fake emails on a laptop.
They had built a mountain of lies that made me look like a master criminal, and for a second I felt like I was actually drowning under the pressure of it all, but then I remembered what Jax had said about Jess’s messy work. I took a deep breath and looked at the screen again, and instead of defending my character or crying about the money, I decided to look at the logic of the "evidence" they were so proud of.
"If I’m a professional spy who was smart enough to steal three million dollars from Apex and bypass Grayson’s biometric security, then why was I so incredibly stupid?" I asked, and the room went quiet because they weren't expecting me to agree with their premise.
"You’re saying I’m a high-level operative, but you also want the board to believe that I left all of my incriminating files unencrypted on a broken, three-year-old laptop that I left sitting on a desk in an unlocked room."
"Criminals get sloppy when they think they’ve won, and you clearly didn't expect me to be smart enough to check the server traffic," Jess cut in, but I could see a bead of sweat on his forehead that told me he didn't like where I was going with this.
"But it doesn't add up, Jess, because if I can hide three million dollars in a secret account, I should be able to hide a few emails from a guy who spends most of his day checking the garage inventory," I said, and I saw one of the older board members squint at the projector screen as if he was actually thinking about the contradiction.
"And if I was working for the Iron Fangs, why would I use the clubhouse Wi-Fi to send the data when I could have just used a burner phone or a public library? You’re painting me as a genius who hacked the Syndicate, but you’re also saying I’m so dumb that I left a trail of breadcrumbs for the first person who walked into my room to find."
"She’s just trying to confuse the issue because she knows the evidence is solid!" Delilah shouted, but I noticed that Mr. Sterling wasn't nodding anymore, and he was looking at the timestamps on the emails with a new expression.
"I'm not trying to confuse anyone, I’m just wondering why a 'professional' like me would leave a folder titled 'Pack Weaknesses' on my desktop for everyone to see," I added, and I felt a small surge of confidence as I saw Jess shift in his seat and look at the door again.
"It seems a lot more likely that someone who was in a hurry to frame me just dumped a bunch of files onto my computer and hoped that nobody would look too closely at how they got there."
I looked at Jax, and he gave me a tiny, almost invisible nod that told me I was hitting the right notes, and I realized that I had finally started to plant the seeds of doubt in the minds of the executives. They still didn't trust me, but they were starting to wonder if Jess was as competent as he claimed to be, and in a room full of corporate sharks, that was a crack I could use to blow the whole thing wide open.