From Secret Desire for My Stepbrother to Reality novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: His Shares

I looked at Jem.

He didn't look away.

He didn't say "What shares?" either.

That was how I knew.

Tom saw it land.

"Friends-and-family round," he said to the corner, like a tour guide. "Three Januarys ago. Fifty thousand dollars, wired from a lock shop."

The bakery woman's dog whined.

"It's worth about a million two the day Heard ships to everyone," Tom went on. "So your big quiet locksmith is betting on me, Lindy. He's been betting on me for three years."

"Is that true?" I said to Jem.

"Yes."

"Every word?"

"The numbers are right."

Tom spread his hands at the crowd from the bar.

"See? I'm the only honest man on this sidewalk."

He walked back across the street to his gray car.

He got in, and the headlights came on, and they swept across all of us standing there.

Then he was gone.

Kath lowered her phone.

"I'm going to stop filming now," she said quietly. "That part's not for the lawyers."

The bar crowd drifted off.

The bakery woman took her dog inside without saying good night.

I went into the shop.

I didn't turn the lights on.

I walked straight back to the workshop and stood by the grinder, because it was the farthest I could get without going upstairs.

Jem followed me.

He turned on the lamp over the bench.

"Say it," I said.

"I bought in the January after you moved in with him."

"Why?"

"Pam's beta invite had a link at the bottom. Invest in Hush. Friends and family only."

"That's how. I asked why."

He put both hands flat on the bench.

"Because you'd built it," he said. "And I wasn't going to get to be in your life. So I bought a piece of the thing you made."

"Fifty thousand dollars."

"Everything I had saved. Eleven years."

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