Page 91 of The Dis-Graced
“But…none of this makes sense.” I look at the picture again, Stephanie’s smiling face peering back at me.
Irene gets up, walks over to me, and hands me another photograph. It’s a picture of Stephanie and Frank together, his arm wrapped around her.
Words fail me. All I feel is pain.
“It makes perfect sense, now that I look at the findings,” she says, returning to her seat. “Elliot is a younger son, and although his family is well off, they haven’t allocated their business evenly. His older brothers are running a legal empire, expanding to do online consulting to clients and making a fortune, leaving him with crumbs. He came to work for Drake under the guise of stepping out of his brothers’ shadows. But he’s a jealous type, from an ambitious line. He’s probably been plotting this for years.”
“Who is Frank?” I ask, suddenly feeling the urge to vomit.
“Elliot’s cousin.”
“But we’ve been together for years.”
“It was a long con, which isn’t uncommon in rich circles.”
“So, how did this go down?”
“Frank was planted, and they waited years for the right opportunity to present itself. Elliot watched Drake and Lucas, Frank, whose real name is Frances Conway, kept an eye on you. If I had to guess, you were dis-graced because Elliot knew that you’d be unable to find work, and that Luke would want to help you. Because Drake and Luke are such good friends, it was reasonable for them to assume that Drake would come to your aid.”
“So, my career got flushed down the toilet so I’d be forced to crawl to my brother and beg for a job?”
“Basically, yes. It may sound like a long shot, but it checks out logically, and if they failed, the plan could still go on, there would just be less layers of protection built in for them.”
“But everything went according to their plan.”
“Not quite,” Drake says, and I look up to see him standing mere feet away from us.
My jaw drops at the sight of him. When I last saw him, I was so full of rage, and although my feelings were justified, I can’t help but feel like I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. The intent of his actions. Maybe the lovemaking heightened those emotions, or maybe it was the realization that by coupling with him, I had essentially put myself out of a job.
Now, I feel a deep devotion to him. Now only did he try to give me a job—a great job, but he went so far as to offer to claim me publicly, taking me out to dinner and on dates. Drake is a good man, and I’ve been judging him too harshly.
And OH-MY-GOD—just seeing him standing there looking dapper as fuck with his blazer slung over his shoulder and his shirt open at the neck has me eager with want.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” I finally say.
“I didn’t want to interrupt. My mom has most of the details, but I can fill in some of the blanks.”
“Carry on,” Irene says.
“Frances and Stephanie were high school sweethearts. Elliot had his eyes on taking Dallanger down a notch for a while, so he had Frances insert himself into your life because he figured it would bring him closer to Luke, the person they wanted to frame. Sometime after that, Stephanie entered your friend circle. When Elliot realized how close we were to developing AI tech, that became his target, and for years, he’s worked towards that. He devised a plan to have you come work for me, partially to distract me, partially to fully incriminate Luke. During that time, he made final plans to sell off ALAN’s software. In order to further incriminate Luke’s guilt, you had to desperately need a job. So, they had Stephanie seduce Brigger, which probably wasn’t hard, and then they set you up to be caught with him in the hotel room, ruining your reputation and your ability to secure additional work.”
“But…I’ve been with Frank for years…”
It’s hard to process the pain I’m in. I loved Frank, or who I thought he was. The fact that he could be so deceitful, so malicious, leaves me numb.
“He knew how much you loved working as a journalist. He knew you’d do anything to work again. And Elliot knew I’d do anything to help Luke. They used all that information against us. Honestly, this wasn’t some grand scheme; it was basically a connect the dots.”
“Did you ever think otherwise? Did you ever think it was Luke? That it was me?”
His eyes shift downward. “Initially, I did. I was never wholly convinced, but all evidence pointed in that direction. I honestly had my doubts that you had even slept with Brigger. I didn’t understand what had happened in that hotel room, but after getting to know you, it just didn’t seem like a possibility.”
“So, you hired a private investigator and figured it out?” I ask.
“Actually, no. ALAN was able to clear you, the PI merely confirmed it.”
I arc a brow.
“ALAN’s analytical programming is able to detect lies. He could tell you were an honest woman, and you had no part in the scheme. He hasn’t been around Luke enough to do a full analysis, but he’s never picked up on deception from him. ALAN had previously tried to tell me that Steph was deceiving you, but I told him it wasn’t our business, and sometimes friends tell white lies. I unraveled the rest last night during a late night meeting with Gabriel Icor, Zevran Heartshire, and some FBI guy.”
