Chapter 35: Adult Content
Lena and I both stared at Benji.
Was there some mistake? I only had to look at his expression to know otherwise. The members of my family aren’t suited to looking furious; one thing Benji and I had in common was a softness to our features that made our attempts to glare look faintly ridiculous.
He gave it the old college try, though.
You’ve heard of red lasers, blue lasers? He tried to shoot hazel lasers from his eyes through the bireme logo of Imagined Worlds. He looked like he’d had some practice.
But because our situation would be so much less uncomfortable if he had made a mistake, I asked, “The crypto market that ripped you off was Odyssey Futures?”
His fists clenched at the word Odyssey. “Yeah.”
“We had no idea,” Lena said quietly.
“Now you do,” Benji said. “What does he have you guys doing, anyway? Writing spam come-ons?”
Maybe I’d have flinched less if I hadn’t written spam come-ons in my darkest moments. What should’ve been fervent denial came out as a mumbled, “We’re not working for Omar Jeffries.”
“So he’s scamming you, too?” Benji turned his glare my way. “I thought you didn’t have any money to invest.”
I shook my head. “We’re not interacting with Odyssey Futures at all. I just saw the company name while I was looking the guy up.”
“If you didn’t know he was the one who scammed me, why were you looking him up in the first place?”
“Because,” Lena said, “he’s the one sponsoring a Third Eye tournament.”
Benji’s thick brows furrowed. “Wait. This tournament. It’s what you were practicing for in the park the other day?”
She kicked at her desk. “Yeah.”
“You better stop,” he said.
Lena had started to slump in her chair. The implied command made her sit up straight. “It’s not that simple.”
“I’d say it’s pretty goddamn simple,” Benji said. “This Jeffries character doesn’t have the money to pay out what he owes to investors who can sue him for millions. You think he’s going to give a cash prize to a bunch of gamers? It’s just another scam.”
“What’s the scam?” I asked. “There’s no mention of a charge to enter the tournament. If he springs one on us at the last minute, we won’t pay.”
Benji flicked a glance my way. “You got it all figured out, huh?”
“Of course not,” I said. “We didn’t know there was anything to figure out until just now. But if there aren’t hidden charges, the only way Omar can profit off the tournament is to stream it. If he refuses to pay up after that, he’s going to catch it on his own cameras and everyone else’s.”
“Sure sounds like you got it figured out,” Benji said. “Look. If I knew how the guy’s scams worked, I wouldn’t have gotten sucked into one.”
“Thanks for looking out for us,” Lena said, “but it’s cool. We weren’t going to give him any money to begin with. We’re sure as hell not going to do it now!”
Benji rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’re not gonna have anything to do with him. Right?”
Lena folded her arms over her chest and sank back into her chair.
I wanted to go to her side, but there was a brother-shaped obstruction in my path. “That’s not your call, Benji.”
“It better be,” he said. “I obviously can’t trust you to make the right one.”
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I felt my fists balling. I forced them to unclench. “We’re not the ones who got scammed by this guy.”
“Yet.”
Deep breaths. “If you’re asking us to stop because Omar screwed you over and you don’t want our family involved with him anymore, fine.”
“Good,” he said. “Glad you figured it out.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what you said. He’s a con artist and we shouldn’t trust him? Agreed! We were already suspicious of his motives.”
“But you were still going to his tournament.”
“Yes,” I said, “because we’ve got good reason to go, and we’ve committed to our friends and even people we’re professionally indebted to.”
“Miguel and that journalist girl?” he asked. “Pretty sure once they hear what’s up, they won’t tell you anything different from what I have.”
“We’ll find out,” I said. “We’ll talk about it, and we’ll decide, together, what we should do.”
“I just told you.”
“And I just told you, it’s not your call!”
“It’s fine, Cam,” Lena whispered.
“It’s not,” I said. “I’ll listen to advice. An emotional appeal, I might even accept. Hell. If you want to talk down to me about it, go for it; it’s not going to break any new ground. But don’t come into our apartment and order Lena around.”
“If I don’t want to be ordered,” she said, “I’ll complain.”
“Do you?” I asked.
She pushed her chair back and stood up. “No! Obvs.”
Case closed. I spread my hands.
“It’s not an order,” Benji said. “It’s just common fucking sense.”
“Except it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “We’re not the ones who are going to hand our family fortunes over to Omar. We’re going to a tournament that he happens to be sponsoring because it’s got the eyes of the Third Eye community on it, and we either participate or watch interest in Lena’s channel dry up.”
Benji turned those would-be lasers my way. “More like you’re going to go down there, sign what you think is a tournament entry form, and find out two days later you sold your whole channel. And probably signed up to film it for peanuts until he gets sick of you and boots you off your own show.”
Two could play the ineffectual glare game. I tried it. “If there’s a sign up form, we’re going to read the small print. We always would have, but doubly so now. I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but we’re not completely incompetent.”
He glanced around the apartment. He sighed. “I guess it won’t be that bad.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you don’t have anything to lose,” he snapped. He threw his hands up. “I don’t know why I bother warning you. Guess I thought maybe Lena, at least, would have the sense to think about it, instead of doing the opposite of whatever I said.”
Speaking of Lena, she slunk past both of us, toward the kitchen counter. I reached for her hand as she passed, but she squirmed away from my touch.
I should’ve shut up then and there. I should’ve mumbled, “Sorry,” to Benji and joined Lena in putting food away. That’s not hindsight speaking. I knew it as soon as I saw her shuffling around our own apartment.
It didn’t matter who was right or wrong, who was ruder, who was less mature.
It only mattered that the argument was hurting her.
Blood pounded in my ears. My teeth clenched hard enough that if it weren’t for my HP, I’d have been setting myself up for a dentist’s visit I could in no way afford.
I started to drag in a breath.
Benji said, “God. I can’t believe you still haven’t outgrown this shit, little bro.”
All the air rushed from my lungs. My breath felt as incandescent as Bernie’s.
“Are you actually,” I asked, “trying to spin the fact you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as evidence of how good you are at adulting?”
“No,” he said. “I’m stating that the fact that I had it to lose means that.”
“Which is doing you a whole lot of good,” I said.
“It will,” he said. “Let’s say the lawsuit fails somehow, and your buddy Omar gets away with it.”
“He’s not my buddy –”
Benji leaned forward. I backed up a step and hated myself for it.
“I don’t give a shit,” he said, his voice singsong. “You know what happens to me, to our family, to Sandy’s family, if that bastard manages to take all our savings?”
Through gritted teeth, I said, “Enlighten me.”
“I’ll make it back,” Benji said. “I will, Sandy will, Mom and Dad will. It’ll suck, it’ll set us back, it’ll be bullshit. And it won’t actually happen, because it’s just about the most open and shut case of fraud I’ve ever seen. But if it did? We’d get through it.”
“Good!”
“It is. We would.” He poked me in the chest. “Would you?”
“It’s like you said, bro.” I shoved his hand away. “What have I got to lose?”
A blast of cold air cut off whatever answer he might’ve offered.
We both looked to the front door.
Lena stood there, silhouetted by the Hampden street lights, coat on, boots on, Bernie slung on her back.