Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
In the course of just a few hours, their world had completely changed, and my fury with Drew had been completely overshadowed and seemed pointless in comparison. I took a cab to my parents’ place and arrived to find my parents with an open bottle of wine, toasting the happy news, having just got off the phone with Stan. I drank a glass with them and excused myself, feigning exhaustion. As I lay on the top of my bed, my mind raced. I had to know the truth, but first, I had to know what Drew was hiding.
I called him. I didn’t even know what I was going to say, but I knew I needed to do to him what the cops had done to me. I had to scare him into telling me what he knew if he knew anything. I had to completely overdo it, scare the shit out of him and hope that he would talk.
“Hello? Freya?” he sounded relieved. Not for long, I thought.
“Drew,” I said, careful not to give anything away by my tone. “I know everything.”
“What? What do you know?” he asked.
“I know about the money,” I said, hoping this was vague enough to hit the mark.
He sighed. “Freya, I made a mistake.”
“Yeah?” I asked, and then waited, giving him some space, and hoping he would fill it.
“I knew you would give it to Dynasty Games, I wanted to help, I felt so bad…”
“I know everything,” I repeated, willing him to go further. I needed detail.
“How?” he asked, and I tried to figure out how I could get him to tell me something – anything – I didn’t already know.
“How do you think?” I bluffed. “Anyway, I want you to know I’m going to the police.”
“The police?” he sounded panicked, and I felt a surge of guilt for doing this to him. “Please, Freya, I can explain. I did it for the money, for the college course in California, but he promised me it wasn’t going to be like this. He told me it was so they could target a different demographic, I had no idea they would completely rip off the game like that…”
“Who? Who promised you?” I was sitting up now, and I felt physically sick.
“Keegan Callahan.”
“No,” I said, as though I could make it not true by simply denying it firmly enough. “Okay, Drew, here’s what’s going to happen, you are going to tell me every little detail of every single conversation, every email, every small disgusting detail that you can remember. And I will think about whether I am going to the police.”
“Understood,” he said.
“Start from the beginning,” I said.
He told me how someone had approached him to share inside information on Dynasty Games’ new project – the social media account had been sharing hints for months about something new. He had refused, and they had offered him more and more money until he had agreed. They told him that they simply didn’t want to put out anything in competition with whatever the big new game was; if they knew what was coming, they could focus on other things, and it would be best for both of them. And Drew believed them. So, he gave them the information, took the money, and then four months later when they released Cre8ure, he had been almost as shocked as the rest of us. I was furious that he could be so gullible, so naïve as to put us at risk like that, but I swallowed my words and let him continue. He told me that he had let Keegan know that I was working there as an intern almost as soon as he found out, which meant Keegan had known long before the trip to Ireland and everything that had happened there. I felt dirty thinking about it.
“You don’t know what it’s been like, knowing that this had all been my fault, and working with your parents… and then he asked me to come do other jobs for him…” Drew was saying, pleadingly.
“Am I supposed to pity you?” I found myself laughing scornfully at this.
“No!” he cried. “But please try to understand. He told me things, things I didn’t want to know… when you were in Dublin.”
“What kind of things?” I asked, freezing suddenly, imagining the kinds of things he might have told him about Dublin.
“He is involved in something worse. The lawyers are right. I think he is stealing money. He practically admitted it on the phone.”
“Why would he admit this to you?” I asked. This made no sense.
“Look, I know you can never forgive this, but I made one mistake and he won’t let me forget it. He has threatened to go to the police and make shit up about me. I’ve never even met the guy, and every time my phone rings I am terrified it’s going to be him with some new offer. He wanted me to join his team, to hack his own security system and edit his own accounts, for fuck’s sake. The guy is insane,” he said.