Lethal Wedding (Wedlocked Trilogy Book 2) - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,10

allegedly stolen funds and give them a little bit off the top."

"That's illegal."

"Most things that get things done are illegal, Aurora. I thought you would know that by now."

I furrow my brow. I hate the way that he talks to me as if I am a little child. What’s even more frustrating is that he both doesn't take me seriously and gives me too much credit.

"Do you have another plan in case that one doesn't work out?" I ask. "Prosecutors don't tend to like to drop cases, especially big ones that have been splashed all around the tabloids."

"Why don't you leave that to me?" he suggests.

"No, I can't. I'm here to hammer out all of the details about our arrangement. If I were to go through with this wedding and marry you, I need to know what I would get from my end."

Franklin takes a deep breath and exhales even more slowly.

"There are a lot of powerful men who owe me many debts," he says after a moment. "I'm going to cash in all of my chips, as they say, and that's how I'm gonna make the case against your father go away."

When he glares into my eyes, I see a fire there that sends goose bumps down my arms.

I know that I shouldn't believe him, but I do.

When I go over to the kitchen to refresh our cups, I briefly glance over at my phone on the kitchen island.

With the screen off and the software hidden in a nondescript fitness app, it's recording and backing up every single thing that we have just said.

7

Henry

When the thunderstorms roll in, I have a hard time getting out of bed. The sheets are soft and it feels like I'm sleeping on a cloud. They're so much better than they were in that apartment near my school.

The kitchen of this three-star hotel room is small, but I'm glad to have it. I've stayed in places without one before and it was always a pain to make all of my meals in the microwave or just eat vending machine food all the time.

The podcast game isn't glamorous. Some have studios and big budgets, but not mine.

Generation Crime with Henry Asher is a shoestring operation and we record most of our interviews in hotel rooms just like this, using my laptop and a few microphones.

This is how I started out when I first got the job at Tate Media. They added a little bit to the budget allowing me to get a partner but not much else.

My partner, Liam Kazinski, is sitting across from me as I narrate the last bits of this week's episode.

This season, which we recorded over the series of a month, focuses on a teenage girl whose body was found in an irrigation ditch behind the library that she used to love to go to as a little girl. The man responsible for her death is a guy who attended a nearby high school who forced her into prostitution, made her run away from home, and eventually killed her.

Elizabeth Kenner came from an upper-middle-class family with long roots in Kentucky.

Her father and his father were both dentists and her mother was a homemaker who raised two other children.

Elizabeth was the oldest and to say that her disappearance and eventual murder came as a shock to her family would be a grave understatement.

Her father dealt with it by burying himself in his work. He died of a heart attack two years later, a year before her body was found.

With two small children to raise, Mrs. Kenner focused her attention on setting up an organization that helps parents of runaways. That's why she's here talking to me. She wants to raise awareness about how dangerous it is for teenagers to run away since many end up homeless and become victims of sexual and physical abuse.

I don't have much experience doing formal interviews, but with my work with the podcast, I've had to learn everything rapid-fire.

Mrs. Kenner answers all of my questions and after I stop recording, she thanks me and Liam for bringing attention to her daughter's case.

"A lot of people assume that she came from a bad home or somehow deserved what had happened to her," Mrs. Kenner says, "but the truth is none of them do. Teenagers run away because they think it's romantic. They want to break the rules, they want to do what they want to do, and they shouldn't pay with their lives for wanting to live a