Chapter 28
twenty-eight
By all accounts, I am a very bad man.
In twenty-four hours, I’ve seduced a woman who has no intentions of pursuing a relationship with me, fucked her so many times I lost count, and bribed her into a business arrangement that can only be described as precarious, at best.
Then, after we finished our breakfast and she made her escape, I wasted most of the day sleeping instead of preparing for dinner with my father.
If I were decent, I would have spent my afternoon typing up an official list for Juliet to work from and finished inputting the damned account logs for Everett Alexander. I want to return all the books to my father over dinner, before I drop the bomb about leaving the business.
But the second Juliet breezed out my door, I all but collapsed from exhaustion.
Hours of sleeplessness left me depleted. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
Watching Juliet go without so much as a farewell kiss definitely didn’t factor into it.
Shut up.
After wasting half the day, I only have enough time to shower, dress, and do a cursory review of the delinquent Everett Alexander account books. In a disgusting display of sentiment, I actually start to put on the lavender dress shirt Juliet wore before I catch myself and chuck it back into the hamper.
Goddamn it .
The woman has me under some sort of spell.
I fight back, making a big show of leaving the button-down behind and choose a color on the opposite end of the spectrum—a yellow shirt with navy slacks and a navy-and-white striped bow tie.
Satisfied, I brew another pot of coffee and sit down to the green account binder.
Why green? I wonder.
I’ve been doing data entry for three years, and the only other green binders I’ve ever seen are my father’s personal files, in his office closet.
No time to dwell, though. I have just over an hour before I have to haul ass Uptown.
Turns out, I don’t need that long.
Because it only takes minutes for me to see it, this time.
Fraud .
Who knows why it suddenly makes terrible, perfect sense? Maybe my endless lust for Miss Rivera runs even deeper than I allowed myself to believe, and I was so distracted by wanting her that I couldn’t really focus before. Maybe, now that I’ve had her, I can finally see .
The numbers don’t make sense because they can’t make sense. Because they are wrong .
Worse than wrong.
False. Fiction.
Millions of dollars from two dozen different portfolios have been funneled into various high-yield IPOs… but the returns reported are significantly lower than the actual pay-outs should be. Meaning someone lied to several clients and skimmed the actual returns off the top.
And who knows if these books are the only ones? What about all the other green ones?
The ones Dad keeps.
His personal clients.
Locked up in his office.
The realization hits me with the accuracy and alacrity of a bullet.
My father is a con artist.
Hillstone boasts a dark, moody sort of ambiance, along with some of the best martinis on the whole damn island.
And thank God.
After my one night with Juliet and the shocking revelation that my family business is, basically, a criminal operation, I need a goddamn drink.
Or six.
I down two while I wait at the bar, trying to smooth my frayed nerves before I face dear old Dad.
I have no idea how to approach the situation. Should I jump down his throat immediately? Play it cool and act like I haven’t noticed anything at all? Let him go on his merry, duplicitous way and just jump ship immediately?
Could I go to jail for knowing about the fraud but not reporting it? Can I be implicated because, as CFO, I should have known all along?
What will happen if I do tell the feds? Will Dad… go to prison? Will Everett Alexander be mine?
Or will the whole damn business crumble into dust once people realize what my father has done?
And, for that matter, what has he done, exactly?
I only have one falsified ledger in my possession, but if his locked closet is full of the same sorts of books… The implications are staggering. He’ll lose everything. Unless he can pin it all on someone else.
When I looked closer, I saw that, although the clients were his, the trades weren’t done under his usual broker number. He probably used lower-level traders’ numbers when he planned to report false returns, just in case he got caught.
It makes sense, in a sick way. But, in that case, I’d expect him to change the broker numbers over time, in keeping with whoever we employed. Maybe he did, in the other books. Multiple innocent people could be implicated.
In order to find out for sure, I have to stay at Everett Alexander for a few days, maybe a week. Just long enough to get into the locked closet and look at the other binders.
If my father truly intended to pin the false books on an underling, it would have to be someone high enough within the agency to reasonably take responsibility. That really only leaves my dead grandfather.
And me.
Unless Dad used a random person’s number instead?
That seems… clumsy? Stupid?
Then again, how smart can the guy really be? He’s defrauded people in the stupidest way possible and doesn’t even possess the competence to keep it hidden.
My throat works, swallowing another martini in one go.
I need a plan, and I have no time to make one.
Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and wish, stupidly, that I could call Juliet. She’d have legal answers, of course, but it’s more than that. She’d also have the good sense to form a strategy.
My fingers twitch toward my phone, but a voice behind me interrupts the movement. “Hey!”
I resist the urge to cringe by reaching for my fresh drink.
“Started without me, huh?” Dad chuckles, slipping onto the stool beside mine. “It’s fine; I had two at the club before I came down here.”
He signals for a bartender and orders a scotch on the rocks. My usual drink. Another similarity we share. Today, it nearly makes me sick.
I have to choke down more bile when he claps me on the shoulder and starts jabbering about the menu. Listening to him debate grilled artichokes versus spinach dip doubles the queasiness seething in my stomach.
How can he just sit here? Blathering on? Acting innocent?
Jesus Christ. How many similar meals have I sat through without even a speck of suspicion? Have I ever gone out with him and one of the people he fucked over?
All of his bluster and bullshit start to make more sense to me as he goes on, oblivious. None of it—his reputation, his status, his relationships—is real . There isn’t any substance beneath anything he projects. No talent or character.
And I almost ended up just like him.
Luckily, he’s so obscenely self-absorbed, he doesn’t recognize my horror while I sit, marinating in newfound insight, staring at him.
He flashes the famed Everett grin. I almost gag.
“So what do you think? Artichokes? Spinach dip?” His smile widens. “Hell, let’s get both. You’re buying, right?”