Page 101 of Eat. Prey. Love.
“Of course they are,” I reply, a smirk playing on my lips. It’s hard not to feel a rush of vindication. The checker slices through Amity’s web of deceit like claws through tissue paper—something I’d love to do to her myself for dragging my name through the mud again. I’m so fucking tired of having to defend myself because these idiots can’t just leave me the hell alone.
Fitz plops down beside me, his eyes flickering with the thrill of another successful hack. He spins his own laptop around to face me, revealing a scatter plot of Amity’s academic history. Her papers are a flatline compared to the Everest of mine. “This shows the reading level of her work, the complexity of sentence structure, overused words, and every tiny detail that proves the paper my dumbshit cousin received couldn’t have been written by that girl.”
“Her stuff reads like it was written for grade schoolers,” I scoff, pointing at the glaring discrepancy. “We’re in college, for fuck’s sake. Can’t she even fake looking like she understands the topics?”
I’m being an intellectual snob, I know, but this snotty little shit tried to say the paper I worked on forweeksto perfect was hers when she barely contributed anything after the class sessions.
“Her vocabulary is quite elementary, my dear Dolly,” Fitz quips with a grin. I roll my eyes but can’t suppress a chuckle. Trust Fitz to bring Sherlock into this—he’s been obsessed with the ferret-y looking human since we started the series last month. “Maybe even preschool.”
“Let’s add your comparisons to the slide deck,” I suggest, already dragging graphs and charts into the presentation. “Everyone loves a colorful visual aid, you know?”
“Stop it, you two. You’re making me want to vomit,” Aubrey mutters as he sits with Chess and helps gather more proof to shoot over to us. “Besides, Fitz wouldneverbe Holmes. Obviously, that would be me with my stony Watson over there. Felix might serve as Mycroft, and perhaps Chester could be one of his Irregulars.”
“Does that make me Irene?” I ask, giving him a playful look. “I could handle that. She was a better opponent for Holmes than Moriarty, for sure.”
“ThenIget to be the Crown Prince of Crime!” Fitz yells as he waves his hands. “Kneel before me, humble good guys.”
“You arenotMoriarty,” Felix says as he shakes his head. “Not even close. Perhaps Lestrade.”
Fitz pouts, slouching as he continues typing. “Not cool, bro. Not cool at all.”
This is going to cause a snark fight and we have to focus—time to change the subject, Dolly.
“Who knew being accused of plagiarism would require so much actual work?” I grumble loudly. I’m actually serious, because though there’s a fire in my belly, stoked by righteous indignation, I’m pissed that I’m doing even more work to dispute the charges. “It’s bullshit.”
“If they wanted to take you down, they should’ve picked something less... provable,” Aubrey says with a thoughtful look. “This is recycled content as a scheme, anyway. It didn’t work last time.”
“Lazy ass unoriginal fuckwads,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s what they are.”
“Guys. Stop bickering.” Chess’s sudden exclamation is like a shot of adrenaline. I watch him pop up from behind his laptop, a wild excitement in his eyes that tells me he’s onto something big. We all pivot toward him, our own work forgotten, as he beckons us closer with a manic wave.
Felix leans in, looking at the cheetah seriously. “What did you find?”
“Something very interesting” Chess says, his voice barely containing the thrill. The screen before him displays the analysis results of a novella Amity turned in for a writing class. “This doesn’t match any of her previous stuff; it’s not even close.”
We all exchange glances, our confusion palpable. Rennie pads over to Chess, leans down, and murmurs something too low for my ears. I’m on pins and needles, watching the cheetah’s fingers fly across the keyboard after whatever Ren whispered has sparked an idea.
“What’s the big deal?” Fitz asks, unable to hide his growing irritation. “We know she’s a liar, so she’s probably a cheater, too.”
“Ren thinks he knows who wrote this.” Chess doesn’t look away from the screen, but the corners of his mouth twitch upward. A chime fills the room, signaling a match. He lets out a victorious cackle. “Bingo! It’s an exact match with Rockland’s writing samples.”
Oh. My. Lanta.
The room explodes into chatter, but I can only stare, dumbfounded. They cooked up this whole plagiarism accusation while they were the ones doing it? The irony would be delicious if it wasn’t so infuriating.
“That conniving, hypocritical, death chewer,” I mutter under mybreath. The pieces click together, forming an ugly picture of deceit.
“Get all this proof together,” Felix says as he gives Chessie a grim look. “We’re calling Farley.”
“He’s sending couriers,”Aubrey announces after a brief conversation, and I can’t help but snort at the absurdity. We have a mountain of digital evidence against Amity and Rockland—enough to get them both sent packing—but even my lawyer feels he needs to send the enforcers.
You can’t trust a snake, nor a shifter that’s for all intents and purposes a garbage removal system with wings.
“Can you believe the sheer audacity?” I grumble. “They accuse me of plagiarism when they struck a deal to submit fraudulent academic work? If it weren’t so insidious, I’d think they were using the plot of a bad cop show or something.
“Arrogance makes preds blind, Princess,” Felix replies, leaning back with a knowing smirk. “They never think they’ll get caught because they’re so enraptured with their brilliant self that it’s not even a possibility in their minds.”
“Speaking of thinking you’re too smart to get caught...” Fitz interjects, his face darkening as he recalls a memory. “It’s exactly what our douchebag brother, Titus, did. His grand plan to oust Felix was so perfect in his scrambled brain that he thought we’d never find out. Buying into your own PR will get you every time.”