“That’s enough, Brittany,” Brett bellowed.
“And you’re doing the same thing again. Only this time, it won’t work. You don’t get to push me out again. You don’t get to take my place. I’m his sister. His only sister. And you don’t get to jeopardize that relationship again because you’re selfish when it comes to his time,” Brittany said.
“That’s what your anger’s about?” I asked.
“Did you send those emails?” Brett asked.
Brittany whipped her head back over to her brother as I stood there in shock. Holy hell, Brett had been absolutely right in his assessment of his sister. She was jealous.
Which was a prime motive to send those emails.
“I didn’t send shit,” Brittany spat.
“Then get out of my office and go home,” Brett said.
“But I—”
“Now, Brittany! Before I have your ass escorted off by my security team,” he said.
Brittany huffed and swiveled on her feet. She walked by me, shoving my shoulder in the process. I stumbled back, watching with wide eyes as she stormed out of his office and down the hallway. I was still in shock, absolutely stunned at what I’d just heard.
She’d concocted all those lies because she was jealous?
“You know damn good and well she sent those emails,” I said.
“What?” Brett asked.
“Come on. You were right. She just stood here and gave proof that you were right yesterday. She was jealous then, and she’s jealous now. I know for a fact she tried to concoct those lies back in college to break us up. So, now she’s moved to emails.”
“Now, I know my sister was upset, but I do believe her. There wasn’t anything she said in any of her other statements that I didn’t already know to be true. So, if she tells me she didn’t do this, then I believe her,” he said.
“Well, I don’t.”
“Well, I don’t believe that Daniel didn’t do this, either. How did that conversation go? Would you like to fill me in?” he asked.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to fill him in on it because I wasn’t sure if Daniel was telling the truth or not. I didn’t know much, but I knew when Brett was convinced of something. And judging by the look on his face, his sister had him convinced she was telling the truth. Even if I knew her to be nothing but a godforsaken liar.
“He didn’t do it,” I said.
“You don’t look too convinced of that statement,” Brett said.
“Doesn’t matter. He didn’t do it. He didn’t even know email addresses could be blocked.”
“Anyone can tell you that, Olive. Is that all you’ve got?”
“Olivia,” I bit out.
I watched Brett stand up straight and roll his shoulders back. The conviction fell from his face, and in its place crept worry. I felt myself emotionally closing off. I felt myself backing away. This was all too much, and I had no idea why this was happening. I didn’t know why it happened the first time, and I didn’t know why it was happening again.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Olivia, please stay. I’ll order us something for breakfast,” Brett said.
“I’m not hungry. I have to go. I’m sorry,” I said.
I needed out of there. I needed to get away before something happened that couldn’t be overturned. Before I said something I knew I’d regret.
Why was this nightmare happening all over again? Why couldn’t we just be happy?
38
Brett
I wasn’t losing Olivia over this type of shit again. That wasn’t an option. Not when we were about to begin a family together. I sat down at my desk and cleared my entire day. I wasn’t moving a damn inch until I knew who sent these emails. I pulled them up and scoured through them. I tried downloading software to unlock the blocked email so I could see who it was. I copied and pasted the text of the emails into a Word document to see if that did anything. I brought someone up from my tech department to talk me through how to open up the metadata of an email sent to me. None of it revealed anything, not any location information nor the masked IP address. And the more I scoured over the emails, the more I was convinced that Daniel hadn’t sent those emails.
This was really well done, and he simply didn’t fit that bill.
Then, an idea struck me.
“This is Tech with Greyson Consulting.”
“Rod. It’s Brett,” I said.
“Hey there. Any luck with the emails?” he asked.
“Listen, the thing you did with the emails, where it pulled up all that data. Can the same be done with an image?”
“Oh, of course.”
“Can you walk me through how to do that?” I asked.
“Don’t save it to your desktop is the first thing. Once you do, the location of the data changes. Usually. Better to be safe than sorry. But right click on the image and click Properties.”