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“Yeah.”
“That’s…great. How?”
“Well, I walked into the store and I bought it.”
“With what money?”
He’s still chewing.
I pay for Josh’s expenses and give him money to spend, and he earns money from the café and from a minor YouTube channel, which has been useful for getting late night burgers with friends. But neither would give him enough to splurge on a new MacBook Pro on a whim.
“I do work, you know,” he tells me.
“In a minimum wage job for a few hours a week. Try again.” I fold my arms across my chest. “How’d you afford it?”
“I’ve been saving.”
“Keep bullshitting me and I’ll go into full ballistic mode.” I don’t do it often, but he knows I’ll pull out the big guns if I have to. Which involves turning off the Wi-Fi and hiding the modem. I know he doesn’t have enough data on his plan to hotspot all the things he has going on online. It’s all I have. He’s much bigger than me now. Not that there’s ever been anything physical about my so-called authority, but now that he outweighs me by almost two to one, he’s a lot less likely to toe the line just because I tell him to.
“I just took what was ours.”
I blink at him as this information absorbs. “What?” I stare at him, but he glares right back, eyes flashing like he’s getting ready for a fight. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “Nothing a thousand other people couldn’t do with that sort of information.”
“What information?” No. Surely not. “Wait. Please tell me you didn’t...”
I noticed after Josh gave my phone back to me that he’d deleted the photos of the bank statements from my camera. I was almost relieved when I saw that. It made me think he wanted us both to move on from it and forget it ever happened. I hadn’t really given the whole thing a second thought since. But he obviously sent himself the pictures and then has gone full criminal mastermind all over our dad’s unsuspecting fortune.
“Holy shit, Josh. You didn’t. Please say you didn’t.”
“He’s never given us a dime, Ivy, and he never will. I just took what he owes us.”
I shake my head a little, hoping I’m not hearing him correctly. “Josh. Are you serious right now? What did you do?”
He looks me in the eye. “I transferred it into a different Bahamas account.”
“What?”
“I didn’t take all of it. I left him a mil. I figured that was fair.”
I can’t quite compute what he’s telling me. “Please tell me you’re joking. Please tell me you didn’t just steal ten million dollars from someone else’s bank account.”
“He can afford to share.”
“Josh,” I whisper. My hand covers my mouth.
“I just took what he owed us for fifteen years of neglect, with interest. It just about adds up.”
“You stole ten million dollars?”
“I redirected ten million dollars.”
“Are you crazy? Do you want to go to jail instead of Columbia?”
“How do you think I’m affording Columbia, Ivy?”
“I’m paying for Columbia! I told you that! You can’t just steal ten million dollars and not get caught for that! What’s wrong with you?”
