Millionaire Hero (Freeman Brothers 4)

12NickI should have done more. I didn’t know what it was, but I really felt like I should have done more. As soon as Bryn messaged me back and said she wasn’t feeling well, I should have thought of some way to try to make her feel better. At least gone by the deli and gotten her some chicken soup or something.

Of course, she said she was feeling sick to her stomach, so maybe getting soup wasn’t the best option. But I could have done better than just showing up at her house ready to break the bad news to her. Maybe I could still do something. When I left her, she was staring at the file containing the plan I had for investing her money. She’d been like that for a while and I didn’t think she even noticed that I was leaving.

It was entirely possible I could go back and bring her something.

Of course, that was yesterday. So, by now she probably had come to her senses and figured out I left. Which also meant she had gone through the file. Only, I hadn’t heard from her. I had no idea what she thought about my proposition. It seemed like a fantastic idea at the time when I put it together. After all, speaking with Clint and Gabe, I was pretty well resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to get her money back through Justin.

I knew he had done something wrong. He had obviously broken laws and should be held accountable. He’d stolen a tremendous amount of money from her and lost it all. He deserved to be arrested, brought up on charges, and tossed behind bars for a good while. I would have said he deserved everything he had coming to him, except that it seemed he didn’t actually have anything coming to him.

It wasn’t something I wanted to admit, and definitely not something I would say anywhere near Bryn, but he had been smart. This wasn’t something he just did on a whim. He had been planning it, possibly for a really long time. When he decided it was time to take all the money out of her account, he did it in a way that couldn’t be traced back to him. He knew he didn’t have authorization to take the money and that it would be seen as theft if she detected it. So, he made sure no one figured it out.

Like she said, he really thought he would be able to get away with that. In his grand scheme, he would funnel all the money out of her bank account and hand it over to an investor who would be able to quickly multiply the amount. From there, he could just put Bryn’s money back into her account and the profits into his. As far as he was concerned, there was no harm no foul. She would never find out what he did, never get a chance to be hurt or offended, and he would have plenty of money to play with.

And if it had worked, he wouldn’t have stopped. If he had managed to pull it off and get all that money back in, he would have just done it again. It would have happened over and over until he either got tired of it or made a mistake.

It turned out he made the mistake before he even got the chance to try it again.

But that still left Bryn in the dust. He had taken everything from her, and while I didn’t have any responsibility in that, I felt compelled to make things right for her. I put together a plan that showed her it was possible for her to resurrect her account using effective investing strategies. It was perfect.

At least, it seemed perfect until I was sitting in my office realizing I’d showed up at her house while she was sick, didn’t bring her anything to try to make her feel better, dashed her hopes, and left her with an investment plan she didn’t ask for. It wasn’t perfect. It was presumptuous.

Well, shit.

I was trying to balance writing up a report to send to a client and contemplating how I was going to fix the mess with Bryn when Gabe popped his head into the office.

“Hey,” I said, looking up at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Somebody wanted to say hi,” he said.

He stepped further into the doorframe and guided his wife into view.

“Cynthia!” I said happily, standing up and coming around the desk as they came into the office. “What are you doing here?”

She still had a cast on her arm, her entire left side was all black and blue, and she was limping, but at least she was up and about. I gave her a very careful hug, and she smiled at me.