Chapter 12
Marcus requested a private meeting.
Dante refused.
The meeting occurred with attorneys and independent club directors present.
Grant attended separately.
Marcus looked exhausted.
“You really turned all of this over to outsiders?”
“Yes.”
“You understand what that does to the family?”
Dante almost smiled.
That sentence had become predictable.
“What did you think framing Leo would do?”
Marcus looked down.
“I wasn't going to ruin him.”
“You built a presentation accusing him.”
“I was going to say he needed supervision.”
“You put surveillance evidence in Lily’s boot.”
Marcus’s voice sharpened.
“I never told Grant to place it inside the boot.”
Everyone looked toward Grant.
Grant’s attorney immediately objected.
Dante remained silent.
Marcus continued before his lawyer could stop him.
“The card was supposed to be found in Leo’s locker.”
There it was.
Grant had changed the plan.
Why?
Grant finally spoke.
“Because the locker wasn't strong enough.”
Dante frowned.
Grant explained.
A card in Leo’s locker could be dismissed as planted.
A surveillance cache inside Lily’s boot, after Leo personally carried the boots, created a stronger chain of suspicion.
Marcus stared at him.
“You put the tracker there too?”
Grant said nothing.
The tracker had not been necessary.
Grant added it so the boot could later be “detected” during Meridian’s demonstration.
A hidden Meridian scanner would identify the signal.
Grant planned to discover his own device publicly.
Lily feeling it move ruined everything.
Marcus had panicked because the boot was being opened before the demonstration.
Not because he expected Lily to be harmed.
Because the evidence was about to appear without the story prepared around it.
Dante looked between them.
Marcus built the deception.
May you like
Grant escalated it.
Neither controlled what happened once a six-year-old noticed something adults expected her to ignore.
