Chapter 54 The Fabricated Truth
Aria POV
The room grew dim as Jess tapped a button on his tablet, and suddenly the far wall was flooded with the bright, harsh light of the projector which displayed a directory of files that I had never seen in my life.
I sat perfectly still while he scrolled through a list of document titles that made my stomach turn, because they were labeled with things like "Nightfang Security Protocols" and "Grayson Hart Private Ledger," which made it look like I had spent every night at the clubhouse digging through the pack's most sensitive secrets.
Jess was pacing back and forth in front of the screen like he was giving a lecture at a university, and he kept pointing at the file names with a laser pointer while he explained to the stony-faced executives how he had supposedly stumbled upon my betrayal.
"I have to admit that I didn't want to believe it at first, because we all wanted to think that Aria was just a girl who got caught up in a bad situation," Jess told the board, and he put on this fake voice that sounded like he was mourning a dead friend while he looked at me with a look of mock disappointment.
"But when the internal server logs started showing massive data transfers at three in the morning, I had to investigate as the head of security, and that’s when I discovered that she was using the guest Wi-Fi to send encrypted packets to a known Iron Fang operative named Silas."
He clicked his tablet and a series of emails appeared on the screen, and I felt a surge of heat in my face as I read the messages that had my name at the top of the header.
The emails were written in a way that made me sound cold and calculating, because they talked about the specific dosage of the poison that was given to the pack's children and how the bakery fire would be a "necessary distraction" to cover the final payment of the three million dollars.
It was a complete work of fiction, but as I looked at the dates and the times on the headers, I realized that Jess had been very careful to choose moments when I was alone in my room or when Grayson was out on a patrol.
"You're saying that I helped poison the children that I spent all night trying to save?" I asked, and I kept my voice as level as possible because I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry or lose my temper in front of these corporate vultures.
"I stayed in that infirmary until I could barely stand up, and I used my own Nana's medicine to break their fevers, so why would I do all that work if I was the one who sent the toxin in the first place?"
"It’s a classic move, Aria, because you wanted to earn Grayson’s trust so he would give you even more access to his personal files," Jess replied, and he turned to the board with a smug grin that made me want to reach out and pull the chair from under him.
"She played the hero to hide the fact that she was the villain, and as you can see from this next log, she even managed to bypass the biometric locks on Grayson’s private office while he was sleeping."
I looked at the timestamp on the screen which showed that his "evidence" was recorded at 2:14 AM on Tuesday, and I felt a small spark of hope because I remembered exactly where I was at that moment.
I had been in the kitchen with Martha making a snack because I couldn't sleep, and we had spent nearly an hour talking about the old recipes she used to cook for the pack when they were still living in the valley.
I glanced over at Jax, who was sitting in the back of the room with his arms crossed, and I could tell by the way he was staring at the projector that he was noting the same discrepancies that I was..
"You seem very sure of these numbers, Jess, but you’re forgetting that I don't even know how to code an encrypted email, let alone bypass a biometric lock that requires a fingerprint or a retinal scan," I pointed out, and I saw one of the executives lean forward to look at the screen with a slight frown on his face.
"I'm a baker and a clerk, and my old laptop is so slow that it takes five minutes just to load a basic web page, so how did I manage to run all these high-level hacking programs without the system crashing or the security team catching me immediately?"
"The Syndicate provides very user-friendly tools for their contractors, so you didn't need to be a genius to follow the instructions they gave you," Jess countered, but I noticed that his hand was shaking just a little bit as he reached for the water glass on the table.
He was acting like a loyal soldier who had caught a traitor, but the way he kept looking at the door made me think that he was worried about Grayson showing up before he could finish his presentation.
"I've seen enough of these logs to know that they were all created within the last forty-eight hours," Jax said from the back of the room, and his voice was loud and clear enough to make everyone at the table turn around to look at him.
"If you look at the metadata on that third email, you’ll see that the routing headers don't match the Apex server architecture, because whoever built these fakes forgot that we updated our security protocols last month."
"You're not part of this hearing, Jax, so keep your mouth shut or I'll have the guards remove you from the building!" Sterling shouted, slamming his hand down on the glass table with a loud crack that made me jump.
"He's just trying to protect his friend, but the evidence speaks for itself, and the board is ready to make a decision based on the facts that I've presented here today," Jess added, and he moved to the next slide which showed a picture of the smoking ruins of the bakery.
"She let this building burn so she could look like a victim, and she did it all for a paycheck that most people in this city won't see in a lifetime, so I think it's time we stop pretending that she's anything other than a criminal."
I stayed silent and watched him, noting every nervous twitch of his eye and the way he kept glancing at Sterling for approval, and I realized that he was more afraid of being caught than I was of being framed.
He was putting on a show, but like any performance, it had cracks that were starting to show if you knew where to look, and I was going to make sure that I found every single one of them before I let them put me in handcuffs.