The knock on the storage room door caused Holly to jump. She looked at her watch and then at the door suspiciously. It was too early in the day to be Victoria, and she’d just barge in anyway.
She picked up her umbrella and edged closer to the door.
“Come in,” she called out, holding the umbrella up and silently hoping that Paul Smith made sturdy enough rain protectors to batter assailants.
The roller door clattered up.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she demanded.
Hugo took a step into the storage unit.
“What are you doing in here?” he countered. He looked around the room in confused fascination. “It’s a little CSI in here, Holly.”
She closed the roller door behind them and then spun to face him. “How did you find me?”
“I followed you.” He pointed at the whiteboard. “Why is there a list of people who work at Arrival on that? What’s going on?”
Holly’s mind reeled. She couldn’t believe she’d been blissfully unaware of the fact that she’d been followed to her secret location by a sixteen-year-old. Her mind was all over the place following the news of the offshore account. Who knew who else could have followed her in?”
“Hugo, you can’t be here.”
He sat down on what she’d come to think of as Victoria’s chair and stared up at her in cocky determination. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on. This weird breakup, it doesn’t make any sense. Mom’s upset, you’re upset. No one is angry—I’m a child of divorce, so I know what that looks like. This isn’t it. I want to know what’s happening.”
Holly ran her hand through her hair. This was one of those parental moments she didn’t feel quite prepared for. She had to make a decision, without Victoria, about what to tell her son, who was far too clever for his own good.
On the one hand, she wanted to protect him. On the other, he wouldn’t fall for any lie she could speedily construct. To be honest, he knew most of the people on the whiteboard better than she did. He could be a good ally to have.
Besides, Holly was the person who had been trying to convince Victoria over the last few months that Hugo should be treated like an adult. Not only was he sixteen, but he was also mature and intelligent.
“Okay, but Alexia can’t know,” she said, mind quickly made up.
Hugo nodded.
“Promise me,” Holly insisted.
He held up his hands. “I promise. I won’t tell her a thing, and I’ll back up whatever you tell her.”
“Where is Alexia, anyway?” Holly asked, suddenly remembering that Hugo was supposed to be taking her to the cinema that evening.
“She’s at Jenny’s. Don’t worry.”
Holly snorted a laugh. Everything made her worry lately. She felt guilty that she was about to spread some of that worry to Hugo.
She pulled her own chair over to sit in front of him. She stared at the floor for a moment while she tried to fathom how to explain everything that had happened.
“You can’t tell a soul what I’m about to tell you, even your mother,” Holly said.
Hugo frowned. His bond with his birth mother was a close one; they shared more with each other than they did with most other people. He sucked in his cheek, giving the request a moment of thought before slowly nodding.
“I received an email from someone anonymously,” Holly explained. “It was a manipulated image of your mother and… another woman.”
“Oh, gross.” Hugo winced.
“Just kissing.” Holly held her hands up to calm him down. “Nothing… too graphic.”
She quickly explained the whole situation to him, the images, the emails, the knowledge the person had, her visit to see Ashley, and Jazz’s involvement. She took a deep breath before she told him about the offshore account, making him promise to not say a word to Victoria about that part, admitting that she’d yet to talk to her about that.
Hugo silently took it all in, and when Holly had finished he blew out a long breath.
“Wow,” he said. “First, Mom would never steal money. She’s got savings and a property portfolio; she’s told me all about it in case anything happens to her. She doesn’t need all that money. She already has money, which means someone must be setting her up.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Holly agreed, “which is why we need to be so careful about who knows what. We don’t know if these two things are connected, if the person who wants to break us up is the same person who has created this elaborate offshore account.”
“It’s all tied to Arrival,” Hugo said. He nodded his head towards the whiteboard. “Someone there might be stealing money and framing Mom. What that has to do with you, I don’t know.”
“Me neither, but we only found out about the offshore account because Jazz is really good at their job.”
“Is Jazz a man or a woman?” Hugo asked, confused by the lack of gendered pronouns.
“Neither, Jazz is non-binary,” Holly replied.
Hugo’s eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, right! Cool, I get it now.”
“Jazz is also a genius when it comes to computer stuff, so I trust them,” Holly added. “But we don’t know if the images and the offshore account are connected. We could be looking at two very different disasters.”
“Seems weird, though,” Hugo said. “Why would someone want you to be mad at Mom?”
Holly stood up and raised her hands in an ‘I don’t know’ gesture. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I want to help,” Hugo said.
Holly chewed her lip. The more heads the better, and Hugo knew more than she did about certain people on the list. He might have knowledge that would be useful. Then again, he was young, and she didn’t know if she should get him involved in something that might be dangerous.
But Holly thought he had a right to know, especially considering how it was affecting him and his family.
“Okay,” she said eventually. “But you absolutely cannot follow me again. Someone might have followed you, and we can’t take the risk that anyone knows we’re onto them. The whole reason I left the house is so they think their plan worked.”
“I get it. I can be discreet,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I’m really glad that you didn’t break up. I know Mom really loves you. I’ve never seen her so happy.”
Holly’s heart swelled with pride. Her lip quivered as tears threatened to spill over.
“I’m happy, too,” she confessed, “and I’d like nothing more than to be home with you all. I wish this would go away, that I could solve it and put things right, but every time I look deeper into this, I uncover something more unsavoury.”
Hugo stood up and pulled her into a hug. Even in the short amount of time she’d lived in the Hastings’ house, he’d grown. Most boys had a growth spurt at twelve years of age, but Hugo had waited until his sixteenth birthday to shoot up. She wrapped her arms around him.
“I’m sorry. I’m a mess,” she said.
“You’re not,” he promised. “Some asshole is messing with your family. You have every right to be angry. But I’ll help you, I swear. We’ll figure this out.”
She pushed away, knowing that if she stayed in his embrace any longer the tears she had been holding at bay for the last couple of days would finally break free.
“Thanks, Hugo. I’m angry that you followed me, but I’m really glad you’re here,” she confessed.
He grinned and then pointed at the whiteboard. “Can we start trimming that list?”
She picked up a marker pen and snapped off the cap. “Be my guest.”