Page 85 of DFF: Delicate Freakin' Flower

Sasha beamed. “Told you they'd help.”

We all sat around the table, glancing between the three cousins, each of us in varying stages of disbelief. What they were suggesting was, without question, illegal—but it was also undeniably brilliant. Morality didn’t exactly hold much weight in the situation we were in, and yet, our usual sense of right and wrong was clearly struggling against the sheer audacity of the plan. Still, this was about saving Gabby’s life, and when it came to that, did morals even matter?

Jesse finally broke the silence. “Do we even want to know how many laws you’ve broken in the past twenty-four hours?”

“Depends on how tightly you define ‘broken,’” Benny winked.

“Or ‘laws,’” Malcolm added.

I rubbed my hands together, exhaled slowly, and stared at the screen in front of me—still no updates on Maddox or Barris.

“All right, let’s build the bait.”

Because if these psychos were going to bring the fire, we might as well aim it right at the snake pit.

Malcolm pulled his laptop out of a weathered messenger bag covered in patches and profanity, then set it down like he was about to perform a magic trick. A few keystrokes later, he was deep into what looked like ten open browsers, two burner accounts, a dark web chat forum, and what might’ve been a Russian server or a fantasy football league—I couldn’t tell.

Finally, he rolled his neck like a prizefighter entering the ring. “We’re going with the investor angle. Maddox has his fingers in five holding companies that are funneling funds into that swamp development. I just traced the public face of one—Lioncrest Equities. Sound classy, right?”

He didn’t wait for a response.

“I’ve set up a digital breadcrumb trail that makes it look like Lioncrest is pulling out—complete with a pre-released public statement. It’s designed to trigger high-level panic, the kind of pressure that’ll make Maddox drop the act and stop pretending he’s still in control.”

Benny leaned over his shoulder, chewing on a toothpick. “Tell them about the pilot thing.”

“Oh, right,” Malcolm smirked. “I also mocked up a fake flight log. It shows Lioncrest’s ‘chief financial director’ flying into Austin tomorrow. It's even timestamped and GPS-stamped. It’s vague enough to not be confirmed but specific enough to make Maddox sweat.”

Jackson, who had been watching with crossed arms and skeptical eyes, let out a low whistle. “That’s actually brilliant.”

Malcolm winked. “You say that like you’re surprised.”

I found myself leaning in, trying to catch up. “And how does that lead him to us?”

“I added just enough fuzziness in the metadata—location tags, digital watermark anomalies—that Maddox’s team will try to trace the source of the leak. That’s when they’ll land on the dummy profile I've made. That profile’s been ‘liking’ posts about a certain little ranch in central Florida.”

Jesse blinked. “You’re baiting a trap using social media breadcrumbs?”

“Exactly,” Malcolm chuckled. “Like luring a bear with peanut butter—except the peanut butter’s made of money, paranoia, and his crumbling ego.”

Even Marcus looked impressed now, arms crossed, head tilted slightly. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

Malcolm grinned. “Oh, yeah. You don’t want to know how many MLM pyramid schemes I’ve tanked for fun.”

Benny burst out laughing. “He once convinced an entire crypto startup that electric car dude was buying them out.”

“Almost worked,” Malcolm muttered.

Elijah, usually the most skeptical of all of us, finally leaned forward. “So, what happens when Maddox or Barris takes the bait?”

Malcolm cracked his knuckles. “We track them through the back-end analytics. IP address, if they’re sloppy. Surveillance footage if they send someone to verify in person. Either way, it gives us a pulse and a target.”

The room went quiet for a beat, and I looked around the table at my brothers—men who usually relied on instincts, fists, and a damn good plan made five minutes before the punch was thrown.

But now we were watching a guy dismantle Maddox’s empire with a laptop, a fake flight manifest, and the gleeful chaos of someone who liked this game way too much.

And damn it all, it was working.

“All right,” I said, standing and gripping the back of my chair. “Set it. Let’s watch Maddox run.”

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