Chapter 218: The Place It All Began
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Lunch with Gigi and Skylar usually felt like a safe haven...loud and chaotic, filled with overlapping stories and dramatic eye rolls that made the school day more bearable.
But today, I found myself at our usual corner table, just picking at my turkey sandwich while their chatter faded into the background, kind of like noise in a coffee shop.
Skylar was animatedly recounting the latest rehearsal mishap from her band for the upcoming winter ball, something about the drummer knocking over a cymbal stand that crashed into the keyboardist’s amp...while Gigi chimed in with sound effects and exaggerated gasps right on cue.
I nodded along, giving the proper "oh no" and "seriously?" expressions, but my laptop was open in front of me, angled just so they couldn’t see what I was really focused on.
And what I was really focused on was doing some deep digging into one Logan Seymour, a failed lawyer turned possible accessory to... well, something really bad.
The more I read, the more questions piled up like a backlog of freaking unread emails. Logan had graduated from Everhart University, an old-money, ivy-covered school, with honors, touted as a prodigy in family law. Articles from ten years ago praised the
"Seymour son breaking tradition" by choosing courtrooms over family dealerships. But then came a series of lost cases, settlements that looked suspiciously like hush money, and finally a quiet return to the family dealership when his brother handed him the reins for a year.
If he was such a damn flop, why did Joanne pick him? She had serious money...real money. She could’ve hired the best lawyer in the state. Instead, she chose the guy Rachel knew from online dating. Was it loyalty to a friend’s recommendation? Desperation? Or something else entirely?
I flipped through old photos: Logan at charity galas, shaking hands with politicians, accepting a "Business Leader of the Year" award right after Joanne passed.
He had the same sharp jaw and cold smile in every picture, like he’d practiced it in front of the mirror until it was just right.
He also had a very punchable face, but let’s not get into how much I wanted to see his face bruised up like he did to Ethan’s.