DEVELOPMENTS

“I need to visit the washroom.” I said. Steve gently uncurled his hand that was around me and comically waved his hand. As I walked away from him, I could tell that he was missing me already.

After the day before yesterday’s birthday party at Steve’s house, which I should rather be calling a reunion, Steve magically forgot about the awkwardness we priorly had. Which was a good thing, considering we didn’t have to go through the cumbersome reconciliation phase.

But the issue was the recent developments that I learnt about his family. I sensed that we would go back to the state we were in two days ago if I brought up the article about his dad. Which meant I couldn’t directly ask him.

Unfortunately, there were no further articles to follow up on the case either. No other articles were ever written about that case. I searched through the town’s digital library looking up the newspapers in that month and there wasn’t another mention of William Miller.

The next best thing was asking people if they remembered about that incident. My father knew nothing about it as he had only come to this town 14 years ago as a refugee who fled due to a civil war. I wanted to ask my neighbors, but social anxieties are a thing, you know.

The situation was just as frightening as suspicious.

If somehow William or some other figure were able to control the newspapers from publishing articles about the case from the shadows, how much of an influence must they have had?

It was a murder case of a person who was suspected of being the leader of an infamous gang, and yet the public went shush.

I read about the ‘Gain gang’ and it turns out they were a group of individuals that proclaimed themselves to be vigilantes, but they were just plain evil. They started out as robbers that would rob only from the rich, akin to a certain famous fictitious character, but soon they began doing things that movie villains would, from drugs to human trafficking. If there was anything illegal to do, they would do it.

The identity of most members of the ‘Gain gang’ were learnt after Steve’s dad’s murder, but four of the member’s identities are unknown to this day. Surprisingly, that includes the leader of the ‘Gain Gang’.

From the contents of the articles about the ‘Gain Gang’ members, I feel like it is safe to assume that the person whom William Miller allegedly killed wasn’t Dominic Rossi. Or maybe not. They just never confirmed that it was the leader who was killed.

Hmm. Interesting.

What if William Miller is the leader and framed it as if he isn’t? Does that mean Steve’s dad is a really bad person? Or was?

To be honest that kind of explains why the Millers are so loaded, but I couldn't jump to conclusions just yet.

I brushed through my curly brown hair and adjusted it a bit. It changed absolutely nothing about my look, but I felt better after doing it. Guess it’s a girl thing? I don’t know.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I heard my phone ring, so I picked it up.

“Hello, Annie!” Emma greeted me through the phone.

“Hey.” I said, devoid of the excitement that she ever radiated.

“Annie, I need your help!”

Should I tell her about the article? What if the kids don’t know about it? What if their parents didn’t tell them for a reason? Wouldn’t it psychologically affect them to learn that their parent is a murderer?

“I want you help me make Nathan take-”

“Where are you right now?” I interrupted.

“Uh- Home. Why?” Emma replied.

“When was the last time you came to school?”

“The first day I met you.”

“And before that?”

“Uh-” She paused. “Why?”

So my intuition was indeed right. Emma had almost never come to school before, no wonder why Steve or her classmates never saw her. She only recently came to find me, possibly because of the surveillance footage.

“Do your parents know that you don’t attend school?” I asked.

After a long silence Emma replied, “No.”

“And what about attendance?”

Our school was extremely strict when it came to attendance. At the end of every month the teacher would visit the student’s house to talk to their parents if the student has an attendance less than 60%. For someone like Emma, who never attended school, hiding the fact from her parents would be a huge problem.

Emma confessed, “Nathan wrote a code that hacked into the school’s website that updates our attendance at the end of each day.”

“Huh? Nahan did what?” my incredulous tone tore through my calm facade.

It logically made sense for a code like that to work, but my common sense remained in denial that a kid two years younger than me would be able to do it. Tech prodigies at his age weren’t entirely unheard of, but someone of that caliber would be more popular than Nathan, don’t you think?

“Nathan is an incredibly good hacker. He is a genius!”

“He sure is.”

After several more minutes of talking, I decided to pretend that Nathan is a kid with excellent talent in hacking, without much proof.

“Then, can he hack a bank?” I asked satirically.

“...Maybe? Even if he can do it, it doesn’t mean he will. He doesn’t like doing bad things.” Emma replied, skepticism evident in her voice.

Having noticed that my pathetically bad satire didn’t work, I changed the topic. “Alright. Here’s a question for you. Have you ever seen your dad or your mom go to work?”

“No.”

“How are you so rich then?” I asked.

“We aren’t ri-”

I interrupted, “You are rich. Regardless of whether you believe you are rich or not, I can swear that you are. My question is, how are you so rich even when both your parents don’t work.”

Emma must’ve taken at least a little offense by the way I framed my thoughts, but it didn’t matter. “Generational wealth?” She replied, unsure of its validity.

Hm, I had thought about this already. But if it were indeed generational wealth, wouldn’t they be famous for being rich. Or infamous. The point is, their family should be more well known.

But they weren’t. The only member of the Millers family that is famous is my boyfriend, Steve Miller, whose fame is thanks to him being the school’s sports captain and being irresistibly hot.

“You doubt that possibility yourself, don’t you? And do you expect me to take your word for that?”

“What do you want to do then?” Emma asked annoyedly.

“There is a much easier solution to this than hacking a bank. Just ask your father about it.” I pointed out the most obvious answer.

“He won’t tell me. I haven’t asked him recently, but when I did ask my parents a few years ago, they dismissed the question.”

It made sense. If the father’s wealth was associated with ‘The Gain Gang’ like I mildly suspected, the couple wouldn’t want their kids to know about it. But this also meant that Emma’s mother knows about how her husband was once involved in a messy situation.

“So hacking the bank it is.” Emma said, with sudden tenacity to quench her curiosity.

“Wait-” Before I could say anything, she cut the call. Just like before, she didn’t pick my calls afterwards.

Hm… were they actually going to hack a goddamn bank? If movies can be taken as a reference, wouldn’t they get in trouble for doing it if they get caught?

Wouldn’t I be responsible for making them do something so reckless, being the older one?

I brushed through my hair again and left the restroom.

“Took you quite a while.” Steve commented.

***

After school, Emma phoned me again.

“He gets 10,000 Aurumstarions each month from a charity named ‘Harmony Foundation’. The charitable trust is located in Willbruk district.” I sensed sadness in her voice as she stated the details. After she was done summarizing her findings, she closed the call before I could reply with anything.