She Stole My $32 Million Bike,So I Sent Her to Prison

To stay in shape, I'd turned down the butler manservant butler's offer to drive me around in the Rolls-Royce. Instead, every single day, I rode a Trek Butterfly to and from work.

One coworker who had a grudge against me would always get snide whenever she saw my bike. "Riding a bicycle to work must save you a ton of money, huh? That BMW X3 of mine eats up almost a thousand bucks a month just in gas. I'm so jealous of you. Why don't you lend it to me for a couple of days?"

I ignored her. I just figured she had a screw loose.

That Friday, I clocked out as usual and headed down to the parking garage.

But the spot where my bike should've been was bare. All that was left was a lock that had been cut open.

A slip of paper was pinned under the broken cylinder. I tugged it free and read it.

【Yolanda Matthews, I signed up for a mountain cycling club trip this weekend, and I don't have a bike.】

【I asked to borrow yours before and you never said yes. Just let me have it this once. I promise I'll return it exactly the way I found it.】

I called her, wanting to tell her the bike was expensive and not built for mountain trails, and to bring it back.

To my surprise, the second she picked up, her irritated voice came through.

"Yolanda, you're being so stingy. It's just a beat-up old bike. Is it really worth calling me over?"

"I gotta go, I'm about to fall behind the group. Don't call me unless it's an emergency. Honestly, with an attitude this cheap, what man's ever going to want you?"

The line went dead.

I folded the note back up and tucked it inside my phone case.

I'd better keep this note safe. If my thirty-two-million-dollar bike came back with so much as a scratch, this would be the clearest evidence I had.

——

After she hung up on me, I sent Candice Jennings a message on Slack.

【I never once said you could borrow my bike. This is theft.】

【I don't want to blow this up. Bring the bike back now and I'll pretend I never saw any of it.】

【This is your last warning. If you don't return it, don't blame me for forgetting we were ever coworkers.】

Send.

I stared at the screen, watching the status flip from "Unread" to "Read."

And still, no reply.

I pressed my lips together.

Read and ignored, huh.

Then don't blame me for not caring about the coworker thing anymore.

I went to the building's property office and pulled the garage security footage.

The footage showed me at nine that morning, riding in on my bike, locking it up, and walking away.

At five thirty in the evening, Candice came down to the garage, circled my bike once, then left.

At five forty-five, Candice came back, a pair of hydraulic bolt cutters in her hand. She snapped the lock off my bike, tossed it aside, then pulled out a slip of paper and shoved it under the lock.

At exactly five fifty, Candice rode off out of the garage on my thirty-two-million-dollar Trek Butterfly.

I recorded the whole thing on my phone.

The building's security guard could tell my bike had been stolen too. He picked up the desk phone and held it out to me.

"Call the cops. The evidence is all right here. You should get it back pretty fast."

But I just smiled and shook my head.

"No need."

Calling the cops now would let her off too easy.

I had to wait for her to dig her own grave, wait until she'd buried herself in it, and make sure she never forgot it.

A woman like this, with no sense of boundaries, who couldn't take a hint and revolved entirely around herself, needed to hurt. She had to hurt down to the bone before she'd ever understand she was wrong.

The next day was Saturday.

I got up early. The manservant had made breakfast.

I ate while scrolling through my phone.

Then I scrolled right past a familiar face. It was Candice.

There she was, on some mountain somewhere, wearing gray yoga pants and a purple sun shirt, leaning against a strangely shaped bike painted to look like a butterfly.