Chapter 10
10
KATE
“ D on’t overcomplicate the disclosure notes. That’s the main thing.”
“When I studied the Uniform Commercial Code, I learned the basic red flags,” I say, “but I need to learn the ins and outs of all this. What’s it look like on Peachtree or SAP?”
“Facts are facts, and we stick as close to them as possible,” Sal Vilamonte tells me. “You’re a fresh set of eyes and it helps to have that, to be able to spot anything that looks fishy to you when you look at the numbers.”
“I don’t have the criminology expertise a certified forensic accountant needs to investigate, but this looks seamless. Ragucci’s a damn wizard. I’ve looked at these transactions till I could recite them from memory and I’m not seeing a damn thing.” I shake my head in astonishment.
“He’s been cookin’ these books for thirty years. He oughta be good at it,” Sal chuckles. “He’s doin’ good this morning. I talked to his missus before breakfast.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I’ve been praying for him. And now I need to pray for myself because I don’t have anything near this level of ability to conceal things in the numbers.”
“It’s about a delicate touch. Mostly he and the boss take care of it, but we handle the day-to-day stuff. Logistics, inventory, payroll. If you have questions about any of it just let me know.”
“Thanks. I will. I just want to keep us out of audit until Ragucci’s back in action,” I say.
The guy isn’t just a wizard, he’s an artist. It’s incredible. I comb through the last quarter’s records, the projections for the remainder of the fiscal year. Not one decimal is out of place, and if I were auditing this, I wouldn’t know where to begin claiming if I suspected misappropriation of funds.
Sal goes through the email from Ragucci with me, the one that lays out what he does in a day and in a week for the most part. A lot of it is networking, it seems like. Keeping in touch with the different departments, checking in on the legitimate businesses and keeping tabs on the operations under the table as well.
I’m writing out a sample schedule to look over with Mickey later. The job is part politician, part accountant and reports direct to the man himself. It makes me sweat just thinking about it.
All I’ve done for the last couple days is learn about the job, ask questions about the job, and avoid my brother who does not know about the promotion yet. He’s high enough in the organization he’s bound to hear about it sooner or later and I’d prefer that he hears it from his friend and not me. Me, he’ll yell at for putting myself at risk. I can’t imagine him shouting in Mickey O’Halloran’s face.
By three-thirty I’m closer to figuring out whatever his method is of hiding the illegal funds in plain sight. I had to go back seven quarters to pick up on it. Cleaning supplies and services including personal protective equipment expenditures. Seeing big budget numbers for those line items after Covid is unremarkable. It’s just the fact that I’ve traced the billing and know the actual cost of those products and processes so I know the figures are padded. I know that’s not the only thing, but I feel triumphant knowing that I cracked this much of his method.
My phone beeps, the new secure one I was issued yesterday. It’s a text from Mickey asking if I can come to the crow’s nest early. I programmed my contacts to list him as BOSS in all caps to remind myself exactly who he is to me. Not a friend. Certainly nothing more than that either. So, I reply in line with that resolution. Be right there, boss.
When I reach the third floor I square my shoulders.
I press my thumb to the scanner after I type in the code. The lock clicks and I open the door. He’s waiting for me. He stands when I walk in. When he looks me up and down in a surreptitious sweep of his gaze, I feel it. My nipples tighten, my thighs clench and I can’t swallow.
“Katie,” he says by way of greeting. The way he says my name, his voice dark, the curl of his tongue around the word, is as insinuating as a touch on my upper thigh.
“Mick,” I say and keep it brief, neutral, officious, and professional. Like someone who absolutely does not need to remove her panties because they’re soaked already.
“I’ve heard good things about you the past couple of days. You’re knowledgeable and eager to learn the best practices,” he says. I should thank him for the compliment but I can hardly concentrate on a word he says. “You okay?”
I nod too enthusiastically. He goes to the bar cart and brings me a bottle of water. I thank him and gulp down half of it in one go.
“Did I forget to show you where the water cooler is in the lounge?” He teases.
“I think I got overheated.”
“Overheated?” he says, plainly unsure how that would happen in a perfectly climate-controlled space. I clear my throat.
“Anyway,” I say, “I don’t want to bother Mr. Ragucci during his rehab, obviously. His health comes first, but—”
“You have questions,” he supplies. “If I can’t answer them, you can email him. With the disclaimer that he can get to it when he feels up to it, no rush,” he says.
“That’s reasonable. Thank you,” I say. “So what did you want to see me about? Or are you babysitting me while I settle in?”
“That’s what you think this is? That I’m holding your hand till you can cross the street by yourself? We spend a lot of time together, my lead accountant and me. He oversees the business end while Rory watches the streets. They’re my two closest contacts in the organization. So while he’s recuperating, you’re it. You and your brother are my conduits to what happens in the system in real time. How’d he take it?”
“Take what?”
“When you told Rory about the promotion. Was he pissed?”
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t told him,” I mutter miserably.
“Wait, are you scared to tell him?” He asks and at first I think he’s giving me crap about being a coward but I let his tone register and realize what he means.
“I’m not scared of him. He’s just going to yell at me for being stupid and I don’t want to deal with it.”
“Just? That’s not how we treat family.” His voice goes cold. “You want me to talk to him?”
“That would be worse I think,” I sigh. “For him to hear it from you. He was fine with me working on the legit side for a while, make some money and get my feet under me so I can start on my CPA prep. But nothing risky, nothing where I’m involved in illegal activities that could be a problem down the road in my career.”
“Do you think I’m asking you to do something unethical?” he challenges.
“I grew up in the life and it never bothered me that my dad packed a gun everywhere we went. I accepted it. But as an accountant, I’ve worked my whole adult life to make sure the math is correct, everything is clear and concrete and true. Numbers are black and white, right and wrong. You can’t manipulate that system and pretend it’s all true. It’s tax evasion and money laundering and racketeering. Those are crimes. So, yes, what I’m doing is unethical.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just looks at me with an unreadable expression. I feel myself starting to fidget.
“I’m sorry. I should—”
“No. Don’t be sorry. You’re the first person who’s ever told me what they really think of the organization I run. You described it with confidence—it’s illegal. You like the predictable number system and manipulating that to suit my needs is distressing to you. You don’t want to do this job.”
“That’s not it at all. I do want this job. That’s part of the problem. I know it’s wrong to work here, to cover up the illegal transactions no matter how much good you do with charity on the side. It’s against everything I was trained to do. In fact, I had to learn more about forensic accounting so I could protect you from audits which exist to hold people accountable. I knew that when you offered me this and I wanted it anyway. This is new for me. I’ve always been a rule follower, Mickey. I work hard to get what I want. When I crashed and burned in LA I think it broke something fundamental in me. I can’t get ahead in life just be being a good girl. I’m not guaranteed happiness. I know how to set a goal and work for it. This is my first time wanting the wrong things.”
“Like what?”
“This job, for one thing,” I hedge.
“And two?”
“To learn when to keep my mouth shut,” I say ruefully. “I don’t love the idea of getting caught and not being able to work in my chosen field ever again, facing charges, all that.”
“I think ‘not getting arrested’ is a reasonable thing to want. If you’re half as good as Sal says you are, we don’t have anything to worry about. You’re looking over the receipts and the accounts payable. Making sure no one gets creative in an obvious way or that they don’t keep it accurate.
“I think you want to be independent, and that’s you, but part of being independent is owning up to your choices. And that starts with you being honest with your brother about what you want. I can tell him about the job or you can,” he says it as open-mindedly as a nearly all powerful mafia don can say anything I guess. He waits for me to answer.
“I’ll tell him,” I grumble. I don’t want to, but I also don’t want to lose what feels like a high stakes game of chicken to a literal crime boss.
“What will you tell him?” he asks.
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe it doesn’t,” he says. Then he shrugs off his coat and rolls up his sleeves like he’s about to really dig into something serious. I sit across the small table and watch his deft fingers unbutton his cuffs and fold the fabric up. He has meaty forearms, a light tan, and he has ink. I nearly swear when I see it. Heat suffuses my face.
“Did you have ink in high school? Rory got in major trouble for getting a tattoo one time when I was a kid. Did you guys do that together?”
“We don’t have matching tattoos. It’s not that kind of friendship,” he says wryly. “I got my first one after I was in lockup at sixteen.”
“You were in jail? How did I not know this?”
“Probably like you said, you were a kid. I got picked up for stealing a car. I wasn’t stealing it, just borrowing it for the evening—” he cracks a self-effacing grin.
“Did the owner know you were borrowing it?”
“He figured it out and that’s how I got picked up by the cops. My dad’s rule was if you’re dumb enough to get caught you can rot in the cage for twenty-four hours.”
“That’s harsh. My dad would’ve bailed me out and then beat my ass for stealing.”
“Would he? Even though he was a fence?”
“Yeah. Hypocrisy was not something he worried about,” I say with an eyeroll.
“My dad wasn’t a hypocrite. He knew what we were and what we did and made no apology for it. Unless I was stupid, and then he let me have it. When I was in a holding cell at county jail, there were a couple other guys there. Drunk driving, vagrancy, drugs. The dude who was picked up for vagrancy showed me some of his ink that he did himself. He was a fuckin’ pro. Coolest shit I ever saw. I asked if he'd do one for me after we got out, and I’d pay him cash.”
“What did you get for your first one? I mean, assuming you have more than one,” I can’t resist asking. I’m wrapped up in his story, his excitement at retelling it, the way his language lapses into the slang of our youth.
“This was my first one,” he says.
He unbuttons his shirt. Transfixed, I can’t look away from his fingers undoing his buttons one by one, agonizingly slow. It’s torture of the best kind. He’s really going to take his shirt off, right here in this room. Alone. With me. The obvious fact of this breaks my brain.
I feel like alarm sirens should go off, that police lights should spin red and blue across the walls of the room. Because if ever there were an emergency, this is it.
Forget professionalism. Forget my dignity.
I am going to lose my damn mind.
“Right here,” he says.
His shirt is unbuttoned to the waist. He pulls it open on the left side like he’s starting a seated yet steamy striptease one half of his muscled chest at a time. I was already glutted on eye candy from seeing him roll his sleeves up and checking out those beefy forearms. Now this. The cut lines of his pectorals, his abs.
Greedy, I want to slide out of my chair and peel both halves of his shirt open, kiss that exposed skin so smooth and bronze with a thick line of dark hair down the center running straight to his belt and below.
The tattoo runs from his left pec right up past his collarbone and over his shoulder. Dark lines, fine and grid-like form a shape I can’t quite make out in the dim room. I squint a little, will myself to remain in my seat.
“Tim gave me a good deal on this one. I set him up in a shop and got him back on his feet. Old dude’s still there twenty-five years later, doing tattoos and piercings, got three other guys working with him.”
He gives a half smile like it’s just a pleasant memory that he was a teenager whose reckless behavior landed him in jail. Where he proceeded to pluck an incarcerated vagrant from his fate and set him up with a job and livelihood. His guileless kindness, his generosity are too potent to look at him directly now. I feel the whole catastrophe start. I’m tumbling right off the cliff headfirst into love with him.
“I’d compliment you on turning his life around and helping him out but I don’t want to add to my workload having to manage the books for another nonprofit to hide your goodness. So, what’s it a tattoo of?’
“It’s the blueprint of Fenway Park. Even though the Sox break my heart every damn year.”
“You got the entire blueprint of Fenway Park tattooed on your chest and shoulder? How long did that take?”
“A long fuckin’ time.” He chuckles.
“Do you mind if I—?” I ask and leave my seat to lean in for a closer look.
“Sure,” he says and sits back in his chair a little so I can see. My fingers itch to trace the delicate lines etched in his skin. I turn my lips under and furrow my brow in concentration. I do not allow myself to breathe through my nose because I’ll smell the distinct and heady scent of him at this proximity. I’m holding together by a very thin thread and one whiff of him will make my knees crumple till I’m on the floor beside his chair. Ready to offer something I shouldn’t even consider.
“It’s beautiful,” I say.
“Thanks. I always liked it. I have five or six more. Tim did all of them.”
“Loyalty. Why am I not surprised?” I say as I step back.
“You’re flattering me again. I have a reputation to protect. Don’t go spreading that around.”
“You can’t tell me a sweet story like that and expect me not to react. I’m not made of stone,” I grumble. “If you don’t like compliments start acting like a jerk.”
“I’ll put that on my list,” he says sarcastically and starts to button his shirt.
“Finally, now I can concentrate on work,” I quip.
Suddenly, the smile slips from his face. “I didn’t make you uncomfortable, did I?”
My brain starts to whirl in my skull. “No, not at all.”
“Are you sure? I mean, I realize I had my damn shirt open in the office,” he says as if he’s actually only now realizing it.
I feel the need to reassure him, only I go too far. “It’s not a problem Mick. I wasn’t uncomfortable. You could never make me feel uncomfortable. Never. No matter what lines you cross.”
Well shit.
“Don’t tell me that,” he says quietly. “Swear to God the last thing you need to say to me is something like that. It’s like an engraved invitation to be my worst self. There’s lines all around you. Don’t you know that? There’s the red line about a mile wide that says you work for me and then there’s the death trap around you with signs saying ‘Rory’s little sister! Do not touch!’”
“You may think that,” I say, hardly knowing my own voice or what I’m saying, “But you put those lines there. I don’t see them at all anymore.” That’s the most dangerous thing of all. Not that there are sacred trusts we can’t breach or lines we can’t cross, but the fact that all that doesn’t matter. I’ve said way too much. I might as well have climbed up on the table and stripped off my ridiculous, modest outfit and lay myself out bare in front of him.
I see his hands on the table. First he holds them out palms up as if helpless. Now though, they’re balled up in fists, knuckles going white. I wish they were in my hair or on my hips, thick fingers pressing into my bare flesh.
“Don’t do this to me, Katie. You got it all mixed up thinking I’m some kinda saint. Don’t trust me this far.”
“I do trust you. There’s not a limit on that either.”
“Then you need some goddamn limits. What are you trying to do?”
“Make a fool of myself it looks like,” I say ruefully.
“Do you know how hard I have to fight myself every day, every time I’m in a room with you?’
“Then why ask me to come here? To the crow’s nest where you know we’re alone and it’s private?”
“You know why.”
“It’s your favorite? You don’t like to be disturbed in a meeting?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he says.
“You want me?” I ask and feel absolutely clueless. Does he? Is he suffering just as much as I am?
“In the interview, you came over and gave me a hug. I thought you were going to know instantly how much I wanted you.”
“I didn’t hug you. I kissed your cheek,” I correct.
“That’s right. Then you lost your balance and I caught you.”
“I swayed and lost my balance because desire hit me like a ton of bricks, Mick. I got too close to you and there was no denying it. I went to kiss your cheek and realized it was the stupidest idea I ever had.”
“Why?”
“Because I had to go home and do something to get my mind right,” I admit.
He smirks, his pupils blown wide. “Did you touch yourself while you thought about me?”
I’m too far in to lie now. “Maybe.”
“And did you come?” his voice drops even lower.
“Harder than I ever have before.”
An involuntary grunt leaves his lips and I’m jolted back to my senses.
I can hardly stay in my chair.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I gasp.
“Probably a good idea,” he says.