Page 108 of Brutal Kingdom

He’s right. I was, and I use his hacking skills when it’s convenient for me, so I don’t have any room to judge.

“Is that all you did? Track Bella around town?”

“Come on, man. You know I don’t do anything half-assed. I’ve also been digging deep into her family’s finances. There are a lot holes and discrepancies in their banking information.”

I’ve figured that part out on my own. “Did you find any dirt on her you could use?”

“What I found was a scanned copy of the codicil to Bartholemew Summer’s will on her father’s computer.”

This dude. Always with the big reveals. “How did you get access to her father’s computer?”

“That birthday party I went to at her place, back in high school.”

His face darkens, remembering that night. He was still trying to work things out with the girl he was dating. He went there to surprise her and came back, different. Harder.

“I left a backdoor open to his firewall, and I kept going back to that file. There were pages missing, but I knew there was a story there. It took me over two years to unravel the spiderweb of data and documents, but I finally tracked down the place where ECS stored Bartholemew’s possessions. I guess they were gonna build a shrine or something. I don’t know. Anyway, I went there one weekend to take a look around and was told the storage unit burned down.”

“You think it was arson?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t raise suspicion by digging into it. Then I stumbled across Jordanna’s name in Bella’s search history. This was after Penn was arrested. The Lance’s seemed to have more than a passing interest in her, so I decided to take a deeper look, too, and realized she may have a connection to Bartholemew’s will.”

My anger’s abating. The more he talks, the more I realize there’s more going on than I thought. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“I couldn’t. You sped up the timeline for taking over the school and already had Bella in your inner circle.”

“Then, why not Tabitha? She tolerates Bella for my sake, but I’m sure she would’ve been your ally, and worked to help you find the proof you needed.”

His eyes darken again. “I have my reasons for not wanting to involve Kitty Kat. Plus, I needed someone digging around with no loyalty or ties to your reigning queen. What better person to do that than the one who truly threatens her rule?”

Simon’s a fucking genius and meticulous as hell. He juggles a lot at school and with our app, but this scheme has too many moving parts. “You couldn’t have pulled this off alone.”

“No, I had help.”

I ask, “From who?” Then, before he can say anything, the pieces click into place. “You’ve been working with Jordy’s friend, the old woman, Pepper Dane.”

He smiles, the way Jordanna smiles at her. Shit, how long has he been friends with the old dame? “She has a guy who likes to frequent the same information super highways and black hat chats that I do. She made me an offer, and I happily accepted.”

“What offer?”

“Her guy would handle most of the digging, so I can focus on school, in exchange for me finding a way to get Jordanna here. I did a little Photoshop magic, shuffled some paperwork, and found the connection for the scholarship. No one was any more the wiser. Then after that embarrassing shit you pulled her first semester, she nearly got booted from school and Pepper stepped in to make sure her tuition was covered.”

“Pepper kept her here?”

“That’s right. Pepper stepped in and handled the administration. My job was to give Jordanna a reason to stay. Your girl is stubborn. She was all set to go to Worthington.”

And the hits keep coming. She was ready to leave here. To leave me. None of this would be happening if she had. “What did you promise Jordy to get her to stay?”

“The one thing any woman who’s ever been wronged by a man she loves would want. Payback.”

My hands clench at my side. I have to remind myself that he’s never slept with her, and that sex wouldn’t be his idea of payback. He favors intricately woven plans designed to decimate your life with the click of a button. “You’re my best friend. I’m surprised she still trusted you after what I did to her.”

“She didn’t know about my friendship with you, and by then, we had a mutual enemy. I didn’t need her trust, for what I had in mind.”

“Tell me exactly how you got her to agree to stay.”

“I borrowed from your playbook and invited her to do what you do best. Play a game.”

“And she went for that?”

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