Page 64 of Knocked Up by my Best Friend's Brothers

He’s angry. Maybe a tad jealous. Conflicted. There’s a lot going through his mind right now. I can read it in his eyes, and it pains me deeply. But if I lose him tonight, at least I’ll know where I stand. I’ll know if there’s even a point in telling them about my pregnancy.

“No, I don’t think I did,” I admit. “I mean, I had feelings, and so did he, but it wasn’t love. And it never had the chance to grow into love.”

“What do you mean?” River asks.

“Our boss called us into his office one night,” I say. “Two of the Mancinis were present. The conversation was brief but clear. They knew we were unhappy, but we couldn’t leave. Not without paying with our lives. Brett called their bluff, and they killed him right there in front of me.”

The air in the hospital room turns cold as the Hawthornes have trouble digesting what I’ve just said. Every word seems to godown with a burn while I try not to remember that specific image, even though it’s forever etched into my retinas.

“Christa…” River whispers. “Are you serious?”

I nod once. “I watched them shoot him. I watched the light go out of his eyes. Of course, nobody in that room knew Brett and I were a thing. The Mancinis had no idea what they had done to me. They wanted me scared and compliant. A woman with a brain like mine had to be subdued somehow. Fear made sense to them.”

“Fucking hell, Christa, I’m sorry,” Nathan says.

“They dumped his body and made it look like gang war collateral. They told me the same would happen to me if I didn’t keep my mouth shut and my fingers on the computer keyboard.” I exhale sharply. “So I did.

“Week after week, I kept my mouth shut. I worked hard. I did what I was told. And at home, late at night, on a secure laptop, I started putting together the most intricate bug I have ever designed. Bit by bit, I built an invisible monster while planting seeds at the office. A not-so-private search in a browser here, a vulnerable router there, I had layers to what was about to unfold. I knew I was the only one who could take them down.” I shrug. “So, I did.”

Cassius shakes his head slowly. “You tipped off the FBI.”

“Oh, I did way more than that. I cloned every single piece of dirt in that company, and I started leaking it to anonymous Reddit boards, with links to back channels. I didn’t call the FBI or the SEC. But I made sure their analysts would pick up on some keywords. I bounced from server to server and even sabotaged the company’s firewall for an impending breach.

“By the time the big kahunas at Perry-Sage became aware of how vulnerable they really were, the Feds and the SEC were already locking in a grand jury with subpoenas and everything. They didn’t have a single second left on the clock. And when the big boys came down with weapons and warrants, it was too late. There were so many people arrested that day, I think they had to take them to three different precincts.”

“And where were you?” Nathan replies.

“Out of Los Angeles. By then, some of my colleagues and managers had died. Faked suicides, overdoses, hit-and-runs… the Mancinis had their methods,” I say, shuddering. “But it was their hubris, their complex of superiority that ultimately cost them a few of their own. You see, when they shot Brett in front of me, they didn’t even know who we were. They didn’t care about our names or our positions within the company. They just wanted to get their point across. Well, I got mine across well enough, too, because I scrubbed myself out of their system completely. No photo, no work log, I even wiped the keycard logs. They had no way to prove I had ever set foot in their offices to begin with.”

“Security logs?” River asks, growing fascinated with each passing minute.

I shake my head, a smile testing the corner of my mouth. As far as revenge goes, it was one of my finer moments, I’ll admit. “Nothing. I ran facial recognition algorithms and excised myself from every single piece of footage. I used AI software to replace myself with other employees wherever I was unable to permanently delete the video files, and I was careful to keep my face off their cameras in the last three months of my employment.

“I knew where it might lead, where it could end if I gave anyone reason to suspect me. To my relief, a lot of Perry-Sage employees abruptly quit after the raids. Some were caught; some were only interviewed. But nobody ever thought to look for me.”

Nathan chuckles dryly. “That is insanely brilliant. Given how much you knew about the company, given what you had already witnessed, the last thing anybody at Perry-Sage or from the Mancinis’ circle wanted was to point the Feds in your direction.”

“I banked on that. I also made sure investigators wouldn’t be able to pick me out of whatever information they seized from the Perry-Sage offices. It took me about three, almost four months to set the whole thing in motion, but it worked. Technically speaking, I am not a whistleblower. Not a CI. I never went to the police.”

“No, you just planted the breadcrumbs and made sure they found the trail,” River concludes. “Fucking brilliant.”

I stare at my feet for a while. “It didn’t bring Brett back. His mother is still looking for the truth. I couldn’t tell her. Not without implicating myself as a witness.”

“Wait,” Cassius replies with a deep frown. “You didn’t tell anyone about his murder?”

“I had to protect myself. I call her from time to time. I send her money to make sure she’s got everything she needs. I even helped her pay for a decent private investigator to pick up the slack from the cops because they had it as a cold case already. Brett’s body was dumped, and the police could never tie him back to Perry-Sage. The waters are murky around his file, mainly because of the Mancinis. They burned every page of his employment file.”

“So, with no one able to connect Brett to Perry-Sage, his murder is still unsolved,” Cassius says. “That’s not right, Christa. You know it.”

I think his ethics are getting in the way of the bigger picture, and while I would definitely consider it attractive where Cassius is concerned, it puts me in a terrible light. It’s bad enough that I’ve been beating myself over it for so long; I don’t need the extra kick in the conscience.

“If I go to the police, the Mancinis will kill me,” I remind him.

“What happened tonight? Out on the road.” Nathan cuts in.

Again, I have no choice but to stare at my feet. “The Mancinis found me. I don’t know how. I was so careful.”

“And there we have it. The full circle clusterfuck of Perry-Sage,” Cassius says, running a hand through his thick, dark hair speckled with silver. “All the more reason for you to come forward about Brett now. The FBI can protect you.”

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