You Fired a Tech Genius novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: The Son

Nobody spoke.

The stove ticked as it cooled, and a car went by outside with its radio on.

Braxton crossed the kitchen and stood over his father's chair.

"Tell me I didn't hear that," he said again.

Gilbert looked up at him with his mouth working.

"Braxton, sit down."

"Say it's not true."

"Son."

"Say it, Dad. Just tell me 'No.' I'll walk out of this house and I'll never bring it up."

I had seen Braxton smile in a hundred rooms, and I had never seen him ask anyone for anything.

His voice was a boy's voice now.

Gilbert's hand moved on the blanket, a small tremor, reaching for the right word and coming back empty.

"I can't," he said.

The silence after that was the worst I have ever been in.

"Twelve merchants," Braxton said.

"Yes."

"For nine days."

"Yes."

"And I stood on a stage in front of nine hundred grocers this morning and put it on the screen." Braxton's voice rose. "I read the line out loud. I told them Hallett froze a man's money for nine days."

"You didn't know."

"I did it to catch him!" He pointed at me without looking. "I thought it was his! I thought I had the thing that would end him!"

"Braxton..."

"You let me do that." He was shaking. "You sat here in your cardigan and let your son go out and put his own father's crime on a forty-foot screen."

"I didn't know you'd found the log."

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