“But you said my mother was the mistake somehow?”
“Yeah. She was initiated, but she skipped town. She never graduated. When you showed up two years ago, they all realized why. She was pregnant, and Garrett had already gone back to Sharon. Who the hell knows why your mother didn’t come clean? She knew she’d be taken care of, but she was a mess. They let her go. She’s up on the wall, but she hasn’t gotten any of the benefits. Then again,” his head moved forward, “she’s never shown up to claim any of the benefits either. If she did…I cringe at just wondering what the board would do to her. She’s considered a disgrace. All of these people help build The Network. They’ve all toed the line and used their power to help the others.”
“Where’s the other foot? When does that drop?”
He laughed again, pointing at me in the air. “It drops when, and if, you deem that you don’t need The Network. If you refuse to do something, you find out really quick that, fine, if you choose to go alone, whatever mistakes you’ve committed from college and onward are yours, too. Information gets released. Testimonies are taken back. You’re hung out to dry, and all because you might not have wanted to help a brother get his sister to be roommates with a certain Samantha Strattan at Cain University.”
He was staring at me hard now.
“That’s how you did that.” And that was the blackmail material Garrett said we must’ve had. That was what was on the flash drive. My fingers wrapped around the handle. I was ready to go at any second.
“What’s the plan? You’re going to upload all these photographs and e-mail them to the cops or something?”
Nate asked the question, but I was thinking it, too.
Logan added, “Not to be a dick, but if we did that, we would be dicks. We can’t narc on these assholes.”
Mason countered with, “Even if those assholes are going to hurt us someday?”
Nate nodded. “Mason’s right. We’re going to go against someone in this organization at some point in our lives. We should let ’em get away with this?”
“Get away with what?” Logan argued. “We don’t know what they’ve done.”
“Because jumping all three of us at three different times isn’t enough? Or setting up his sister as a spy on Sam?” Nate gestured to me. His disgust was evident. “All of those are good enough reasons for us to go to the authorities with this.”
Mason shook his head. Logan was right. They didn’t narc to the authorities. It’d been their code for so long, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t narc at all.
“What about if we let them know?” I said.
“Let them know what?” Logan started to lean forward again, resting his elbows on his knees.
I frowned. “Are you completely forgetting the brace on your chest? Stop moving around so much.”
Logan shot me a grin. “Stop looking for ways to undress me, woman. You’re my brother’s mate.”
Mason covered my hand with his and said in a warning, “Logan.”
“Okay, okay.” Logan shot him a look. “We hear you loud and clear. Mason,” he indicated his brother, “what’s the plan?”
Mason held up the box with all the information we had with his free hand. “We’re going to upload all this information and e-mail it to them.”
That was the plan.
Logan snorted. “Genius.” He didn’t hold back his sarcasm.
Sebastian was staring at me, long and hard. He just revealed how he got Summer to be my roommate, and he echoed softly, “That’s how I did that.”
I took a breath. My nerves were stretched tight. I needed to stall him so Mason could upload the flash drive. It had to be from a computer as close to Sebastian as we could get. Once he was done, he’d be coming through that door. I looked at it now, wondering how long he would be.
“You can’t run, Samantha.”
“What?”
“You think you can run, but you can’t. The door is locked until I choose to unlock it.”
“You opened the door—”
But he hadn’t.
I was rewinding everything in my mind. He hadn’t opened the door from the inside. I opened it from the outside.
“People can come in?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “But they won’t.”
“Why not?” He was too casual, too confident.
Mason was coming.
“Enough with my truth. I told you all about The Network. I didn’t want you to come today. I thought, after what had happened with Logan, that would’ve cemented it. Even if someone else reached out, you’d have nothing to do with us, but here you are. You came to the party. You came to this room. You heard about everything. Now, it’s your turn.” He paused and leveled me with an intense look. “Why are you here, Samantha?”
My mouth was dry, and my heart was pounding. It was my turn to spin a web so I started with my first lie. “I came in here to record a confession from you.”
His eyes were still narrowed, but they relaxed slightly. “Really?”
Mason taught me well. The first step to lying was, give a lie that would be believable.