Page 55 of Business or Pleasure

The papers. Right. I needed to start there.

I forced myself to focus on my breathing, to think of nothing but those slow, deep breaths. A couple minutes passed before I was able to pull myself together, but I felt relieved that I managed at all. I could do this. Start with those papers and move on from there.

I thought Baylen might’ve taken them with him, but I found the envelope and the papers on the counter where I’d put them during the argument.

Everything I read just pissed me off because I knew most of the information. I either put it together or checked it. Some bits were ones I knew I had access to, but I never looked at personally, which meant this wasn’t just a matter of papers I didn’t print, but things I didn’t even access. A part of me wished that I knew that before Baylen had left, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t have made a difference. If he didn’t believe me about one thing, he wouldn’t about something else.

Not that it mattered.

I grabbed a bottle of water from my fridge and took the papers over to the table and spread them out to compare them. All but one had been printed, and they were all formatted the same, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they were sent from the same computer. None were creased or crumpled, which I took to mean that they weren’t pulled out of any trash cans or anything like that. All of that basically meant I wasn’t really going to learn anything from them.

The handwritten page, however, might give me something to work with, even if I couldn’t say for sure that it was his handwriting. It was too faded, like it had been soaked and then dried. Weird, but that wasn’t what I was trying to figure out at the moment.

Who had he given this note to?

And why the hell had he signed it love dad?

What I called him growing up all depended on the con. If I was supposed to be his daughter, his niece, an orphaned ward…as an adult, I stuck with Franklin. It was the love part that was the strangest, though. Even when he called himself my father, he never said that he loved me. Not for real. I honestly couldn’t think of a single time he ever said it when it wasn’t part of a con.

Even that was over now because there was no way in hell I was ever going speak to him after–

I stopped mid-thought.

If I wanted to figure out what was going on, I couldn’t cut Franklin completely out of my life. Not yet, anyway. He was the only person I knew who was involved. Even if the handwriting on that note wasn’t his, it had to have been written by someone who knew that he’d approached me in the first place.

I re-read the note, going more slowly this time. I only could think of one reason why that envelope showed up at my apartment; someone was trying to make me look guilty.

That brought up the second question.

Why?

If the papers in the envelope were supposed to be information I collected from a list my father gave me, then why was that magazine article about my past in there? I wouldn’t have printed it myself. I hated it. Why would I want something to remind me of that awful time in my life? And why would my dad want to give me something that he would’ve known would piss me off?

Shit.

That article proved I was being framed. The only purpose of it was to expose my past and spread distrust. From the beginning, I should have realized what was going on. Maybe Baylen would still be here with me if I had.

Sadly, no. He refused to believe me. A single sheet of paper wouldn't have made a difference.

I had to fix this. Once I figured out why, I could figure out who.

Or vice versa, I guess.

If Franklin could work alone, I would've just assumed he was pissed at me for saying no, and he wanted to ruin my life. However, he couldn't have done it all by himself. I knew that when he came to me to get the info in the first place. For Franklin to have the handwritten letter and the private information in the same place, he must have gotten the info from someone else.

It would have to be someone who worked at MIRI. There was no way for anyone else to have gotten it. He knew the names of other employees and had ways to contact them. And someone had done what I hadn’t.

I didn’t know every person at MIRI, but to access information about BSS, they most likely had been working on the project alongside me. I supposed department heads might’ve been able to get into everything, but I had a feeling they’d be harder to bribe.

I couldn’t think of anyone who would want to help my father, but maybe I needed to think of who wanted to hurt me. I wouldn’t have thought I was there long enough to make any enemies, but some people were just assholes, I supposed.

I needed to talk to Franklin.

If he’d purposefully tried to frame me, it could be dangerous, but with everything that I had on the line, I was willing to risk it. Even with his threat, I didn’t truly think that he’d hurt me, but if he did, I’d at least know for certain that he was as big of an asshole as I always thought.

I wouldn’t think about what would happen if he actually managed it.

I had enough shit on my mind already.

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