Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“She only hates you because you go out of your way to make her life harder than it needs to be,” Cody interjected.
“Oh, like she hasn’t done the same shit to me?” She snorted. “Stealing my homework? Reporting me as cheating during school? Making fun of my learning disability? Making everyone hate me? What about when she poured Nair in my shampoo? What about when I saved up enough money to buy a car on my own? And it was taken and ‘no one could find out what happened to it?’ What about when my cat was thrown out in the cold? I know that she was behind all of it.”
Romeo’s arms tightened around me.
“I did none of those things, Birdee,” I promised.
“She didn’t,” Cody agreed with me.
“Oh, sure, sure. And you’re one that I’ll really take at face value.” Birdee crossed her arms over her chest, and the move looked like it pained her. “You stole my father. Turned him against me. He doesn’t return my calls. He doesn’t spend any time with me. Refused to see me on his weekends. He looks at me like I’m the lint at the bottom of the dryer vent. He went to your graduation and not mine. He went to all of your school plays and sporting events. Every single milestone, he was there for you. And me? I’m just chopped liver.”
Vito inhaled swiftly. “That’s not true, Birdee.”
“Sure,” Birdee snorted.
“Birdee, it’s not,” Grace whispered. “We wanted you.”
Birdee didn’t reply.
“Birdee, can you sign into this for me?”
Apollo handed her a tablet.
“How would I sign into someone else’s tablet?” Birdee rolled her eyes.
“Use those hacker skills,” Apollo suggested.
Birdee looked confused.
“I don’t have those.”
Apollo nodded, then turned to look at Romeo and me. “So I was wrong.”
“About what?” Romeo asked.
“She’s not the hacker,” he said. “The mother is.”
Everyone in the room went still. “What?”
Gentry crossed his arms over his chest. “She truly has no clue what she’s doing with technology. I can assure you.”
Birdee muttered something under her breath that had Gentry smirking.
“She couldn’t figure out how to work the remote on the hospital bed. And I physically watched her lock herself out of her phone.”
“How do you know it’s my stepmother?” I asked.
“Because I got suspicious when I started looking through everything,” he answered. “Everything that was done to you from Birdee was in turn done to Birdee. Though after getting Romeo’s word that you’re a good human being, I know that you’re not responsible for single-handedly ruining Birdee’s credit. Everything points to you. There are emails and receipts that clearly indicate you. But after hacking into both of your personal phones, you both have completely different email addresses than the ones used for all of the information.”
“I only have one email,” I admitted.
“Same,” Birdee muttered.
“Yeah, that I knew. So, I started digging more. And I noticed that Birdee was using stuff under your name just as much as you were using stuff under hers. At least until about two years ago when you started to distance yourself from your stepmother’s reach.”
“This is all so confusing.” I rubbed at my temples.
“What it looks like, Whitney started to use both girls’ lines of credit when they were around ten or eleven,” he said. “I don’t know if either of you know it or not, but both of you were encouraged to buy new. And Whitney ‘helped you pay for them’ with her own car guy. There are emails back and forth telling him what was going on and what needed to be done. Not to mention, she’d get your credit back up to good, then go back to the other one. Constantly bouncing between the two of you and switching your information up all the time. It looked like she was just careless, and got confused who she was supposed to be using and when. After some research, it looks like there are over fourteen lines of credit between the two of you. Some are even shared lines of credit. Oh, and you have two buildings in your name. Four cars. Two houses. Eighteen credit cards a piece.”
“What the holy hell?” Vito asked, bringing his hands up to his head.
“Tom is oblivious,” Apollo continued. “And sadly, there’s no real rhyme or reason to anything she’s doing.”
“So what happened after you confronted her?” Cody asked warily.
“She freaked the fuck out. Backed into my car and I wasn’t sure it was drivable.” She winced as she looked at me. “I saw your car across the street and I just…I took it. I’m sorry. I saw the spare key under the wheel well. I just had to get the fuck away from her. I drove like a bat out of hell. Saw Cody and just…didn’t think. I wanted to get away for a minute. Then I lost control in my recklessness.” She hesitated. “I would say I’d pay you back but at this point, I don’t know if I can even do that.”