Page 112 of Angel Eyes

“My thoughts exactly. I never had a reason to question her before then, but this time, I could tell something was wrong. But when I pressed her for information, she became more and more cagey about it until eventually she told me to just forget it.”

“I’m afraid to ask, but how much money did she want?”

“Five hundred thousand euros.”

My mouth popped open. “She wanted half a million euros?”

“Yeah. The only investment strategy my father was routinely comfortable with was real estate, so the amount wasn’t totally beyond the pale. Still, we’d never invested that much at one time and with the way she was acting …”

“So, you didn’t give her the money?”

“No,” he said, his expression darkening. “But that didn’t stop her in the end.”

“What do you mean?”

“A week later, my father called me into his office and informed me the bank had called about an unusually large withdrawal. A withdrawal made using my credentials. For five hundred thousand euros.”

“She stole your credentials?”

“It wasn’t her. It was my cousin, Lucien.”

I blinked in confusion. Lucien. Where had I heard that name before?

“It wasn’t until later that I got the full story, but at the time when my father confronted me, the only thing I knew for sure was Elise had asked me for the same amount of money that had gone missing. My first thought was exactly what you said—that she had gotten a hold of my credentials and made the withdrawal under my name. My second thought was I had been right to assume she didn’t have my father’s permission. Otherwise, she could have used her own credentials.”

“She was on the bank account too?”

“She was my father’s business manager—it wasn’t uncommon for her to make multiple transactions a day for anything ranging from paying suppliers to wiring earnest money for a new property investment.”

I chewed on my lip, turning this information over. “So, if she used your credentials, that must have meant she didn’t want the transaction traced back to her. What did you tell your father?”

“The truth. That I didn’t take it.”

“And he didn’t believe you?”

He shook his head, a frustrated sigh pushing past his lips. “There was no proof the account had been hacked or tampered with on the bank’s backend. And even if my password had been stolen by a third party, all logins required dual authentication. A code would have been sent directly to my phone. Considering my phone was in my possession while I was speaking with my father, I would have had a hard time convincing him I had no knowledge of the withdrawal.”

“But wouldn’t Elise have had access to your phone?”

“She would have, but it didn’t matter. I already knew she was involved.”

I frowned. “So, even after you explained everything to your father about Elise—”

“I didn’t tell him about Elise.”

“You … you didn’t?”

He sighed, a look of exhaustion coasting over his features. “Even knowing what she had done, I still cared about her. I thought I was protecting her.”

I gaped at him. “Gabriel, what she did was embezzlement. It’s a criminal offense—”

“You think I don’t know that?” he said, his jaw clenching. “Tell me, what would you have done in my place? If you found out I was the one who committed a crime? Would you immediately sell me out? Stand by while I faced prison time?”

“Of course not. I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Exactly. And I had no time to think it through. I didn’t even have time to talk to her and find out the whole story. All I could do was fall on my sword for her. And that’s what I did.”

“And your father?”

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