Page 188 of Push

When the elevator pinged to a stop, I charged past reception and down the corridors to Liam’s office. I flung open the door. My gaze narrowed on the empty chair tucked neatly behind his desk.

“Dammit,” I grumbled.

I wandered down the corridor to Elias’s office. After a quick knock on the door, I didn’t wait for him to call out before heading inside. He glanced up from his computer. He didn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, he smiled.

“Where’s our fearless leader?” I asked, snicking the door shut behind me.

Elias shrugged. “He might have had a tip-off that you were on your way to nail his balls to the wall.”

“Shouldn’t you be hiding with him, then?”

A dark eyebrow lifted. “How angry are you?”

“Angry? You’re worried I’mangry? Elias, you and Liam… You understand you committed a crime, right?”

“Yeeeah…” he said slowly, like I was the dumb one.

“More than one.”

Sighing, he pushed his chair back and edged his way around the desk. “Look, Gwen… It’s not what you think.”

I folded my arms. He couldn’t be serious.

“Okay, it’s exactly what you think,” he said.

“Admitting that doesn’t mean you don’t owe me an explanation.”

“That’s fair.” Elias slouched against the desk, his gaze dropping to where his hand twitched along the hem of his jacket. “I don’t always agree with Liam’s crusades, but this time…” He lifted his shoulder. “Toby’s father earned his fortune by preying on people’s misery. He was the type of man who never paid for his crimes; he simply paid off the right people to make them disappear. I wish I could tell you I’m sorry that we took his money, Gwen, but I’m not.”

My palm went straight to my chest, betrayal cutting into my voice. “And so, you decided to involve me? Do you haveanyidea what you’ve done? The trouble you’ve caused?”

He flinched. “We didn’t know how to make it right—and it was never our money to keep. We bought ourselves extra time by handing control of the money to the one person who’s never been afraid to stand up to the bad guys.You.”

“Except I didn’tknow, Eli!”

“Would you have agreed if you did?”

“Of course not!”

“And that’s how I know we made the right choice.” He slipped a manila folder off the top of the stack on his desk and held it out to me. “And it’s your choice what happens next.”

I eyed the folder with suspicion. No way. Taking that folder was agreeing to a hundred new problems I didn’t need.

Elias thrust the folder at me again. “Think of it as some light bedtime reading before your next trip to the police station. You’ll find copies of the trust deed, accounts, earnings, donations… every document you need.”

“Everyforgeddocument.”

“Forgedsignatures,” he corrected. “We paid a lot of money to have everything drawn up by one of the law firms with nice harbor views.”

Shocked that he’d casually admit his part in Liam’s scheme, my heart sank like lead. “You’re not the person I thought you were at all.”

“Gwen, you know where we started in this world. Look around these offices.” He held his arms wide. “Do you think a couple of kids who’d given up waiting on their next meal could achieve a life like this without getting their hands dirty? You learn early on that you starve…or…you even out the odds. Maybe Liam and I would’ve made it anyway. We were smart. We were prepared to work our asses off. But we only got that first job because we had therightuniversity on our resumes, wore therightsuit for the job interview, and knew therightway to smile and pretend we were just like everyone else in the room.”

His words hit that dark, hidden place where I could never truly escape where I’d come from. We shared the same history. I understood, but… “That doesn’t make it right.”

“Why is it wrong when poor people make these choices? Why are they punished when rich people like Toby’s father do the same thing—worse—and get away with it?”

“I’dnever do something like that.”

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