Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“And you are so full of yourself,” she shot back.
“All right, kids, you two can hammer this out later, when I’m not here,” Marcy butted in. She then added in Core’s direction, “I hope you brought condoms.”
Core busted out laughing again.
He also decided he liked Marcy.
“Oh my God, Marce!” Hellen snapped.
“Moving on,” Marcy decided, her attention going back to Core. “The deal is, we have a friend who’s dating some guy she met on Bumble. She thinks she’s falling in love with him. In the beginning, he gave her the full treatment. Fancy car. Fancy restaurants. Flowers. Gifts. A weekend away. Promises of more good times to come. Now he’s bumming money off her.”
Well, hell.
Core took a drag off his beer as Marcy continued.
“So Hellen did an online dive into him, and on the surface, he seems legit. He has social media. He’s got friends. He’s posting pictures of him with Bree, or just Bree, and he seems really into her. He’s a partner at a firm that has a website. You call the number and ask for him, they say he’s not in, but they’ll take a message for you.”
“But you don’t buy it,” Core surmised.
“We don’t buy it,” Marcy agreed.
“What tweaks you?” Core asked.
“Well, now it’s the fact he lives at a house of quintuplets, him being one of them,” Hellen said. “So, if he’s a hotshot venture capitalist with tons of money to hand out to aspiring entrepreneurs, why does he share a three-bedroom house in Littleton with four other guys?”
“Pertinent question,” he grunted.
“Four other guys Bree doesn’t know he lives with. She thinks he lives in that house alone. She thinks this because she never mentioned any roommates, and she’s been to that house more than once. Did those men look like they were hanging at a friend’s house, that friend right now out on a date with his girl Bree?” Hellen went on.
Core wasn’t feeling this situation, because no, they didn’t.
They were making themselves at home because they were home.
“But all this started because he’s supposedly in a partnership that invests millions of dollars in startups.” Hellen kept at it. “And if that’s the case, why would he be cash poor and need to borrow what would amount to chump change to him, but it’s two months’ rent for his girl?”
Jesus.
“Another pertinent question,” he replied.
“Oh, and by the way,” she carried on, “he’s been seeing that girl for all of three months. He drives a BMW, and he wears a Patek Phillipe that could be knock-off, and is, I’m guessing at this juncture. And so are the Chanel earrings he gave her for their first month anniversary.”
“I got a question for you,” Core said.
She gave him a let’s have it chin jut.
“What’s a Patek Phillipe?”
“A really expensive watch.”
“And another question,” he continued.
She sent him another jut.
“Why didn’t you call Jag in on this?”
“What?” she asked.
“Why didn’t you tell Jagger about this and ask him to handle it?”
“Why would I do that?” She seemed sincerely bewildered.
“I don’t know,” he returned. “Because he’s your brother-in-law and because he’s also Chaos. Chaos has had a charter in this city for six decades at least. They know everybody. If they don’t know somebody, they know someone who can find out, and then they can take care of business on the other end.”
“But…we can and are taking care of business on our end,” she asserted.
He didn’t know what to say to that. Or at least he didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t completely offend her.
So he kept quiet.
“He’s just a Tinder swindler,” she declared. “Marcy and I get some evidence, show it to Bree, Bree demands her money back and ends it with him. Done.”
Should he tell her?
She looked to Marcy. “I think he’s got more than one social media profile. Probably working with different names and pictures with his other victims. But I don’t know how to find them. I don’t remember any of those guys showing as friends of his, and I would have remembered them. I’m not sure what’s up with that house, but we need to get inside. We’re gonna have to figure out how to do that. I think damsel in distress, maybe a flat tire. You engage the guys with fixing the tire on your car, I’ll sneak inside and figure out how he pulls off the lives-alone thing when Bree is there.”
That answered that.
Fuck yeah, he was going to tell her.
But first…
“You are not fuckin’ doing any of that,” he declared.
He got both of their attention when he said that.
“Sorry?” Hellen asked calmly, but fire was flashing in her eyes.
“This isn’t a little scam, baby, this is a big one. This dude isn’t doing this to your girl and some others. All those guys are scamming chicks.”
Hellen’s eyes got big, and yeah, there it was again.