Page 85 of Man of the Year

“I will tell you later,” he says dismissively.

“No, not later. Tell me now. And tell me what I have to do with all of this?”

He turns to me slowly, his gaze sad. “Nothing, Natalie. Except that you might have just ruined thousands of lives.”

SIXTY-FIVE

NATALIE

“Okay-okay-okay. Back up, Julien.” I stare at him in shock. “You have a tracker on Rosenberg and Nick. Why?”

“Because I’m tracking them.”

I whimper in frustration. I want to ask about the hidden camera but hold my tongue for now. Nothing about this house makes sense anymore.

“You knew Rosenberg wasn’t who he said he was?” I ask.

“Yes.” Julien detaches the hard drive from one computer and hooks it up to another one.

“And you knew that I knew?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Your phone, Natalie. There’s not a single step you made in this house without me knowing. Including your phone calls and texts. I apologize for that, but it was necessary.”

“Youtook the letter out of my purse?”

“Yes. If Nick found out, it would’ve been a disaster.”

“Nick?”

Julien turns to face me. “Nick is the man behind IxResearch.”

I gape at him. “Nick, the driver?”

“To put things simply, Nick is the brain of IxResearch. The man that you know as Rosenberg is just a face, an actor. And the real Rosenberg is dead.”

That’s a lot to process, but I still don’t understand why Julien is doing this. “So why don’t you go to the police? This is identity theft.”

“It’s not as simple as you think. We can’t just hand Nick over to the police. There’s not enough evidence to implicate Nick in the IxResearch scam. He’s that smart.”

“Wait. What do you mean IxResearch is ascam? It’s the largest stock exchange in the US.”

“It is. Nick took IxResearch, which was developed by the actual Geoffrey Rosenberg, and turned it into a billion-dollar company.”

“And that’s bad how?”

“It’s not. Until Nick pulls the plug. He’s slowly transferring funds to a number of offshore accounts. Today, the meeting in Manhattan made IxResearch shares public. Which means, as we speak, the company is flooded with investments, making its value increase like no other crypto company in history. If Nick gets anywhere close to Ix accounts, he will drain them. Even if Nick is arrested, he will never give up the passkeys. He will be rich, even in jail. And millions of people will lose money overnight.”

My eyes dart to the screens. “Is that what those are?” I nod toward them. “His accounts?”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t access them?”

“No.”

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