Chapter 28
O ur conversation is interrupted by a call from Declan Kruk, his name big and bold on the car’s screen. I immediately notice the shift in Adam’s demeanor—the professional, calculated side of him emerging, a part of him I’m still getting to know.
It feels like an intrusion, and now I’m irritated. Declan always has a way of making me feel irritated. Adam puts up his index finger, and I assume he’s signaling for me to be quiet.
“I’m in the car,” Adam says after tapping the answer button.
“Pro tip for you,” Declan’s distinctly sexy voice says through the speakers. “Buy the dip on Polygon right now. The meme traders are about to stir things up.”
“Thank you, sir,” Adam replies, his tone appreciative and lighter than before.
I can’t help but let out a small laugh in disbelief. Is this insider trading?
Adam flashes me a scolding glance, then asks, “Can we meet this week? I’ll be in the city.”
“Can’t. I’m tied up with a marketing push in Europe,” Declan responds curtly.
The change in his tone is noticeable. Did he realize I was in the car?
Would he recognize my laugh? Get over yourself.
Adam was probably the only one meant to hear it, and Declan’s tone shifted because someone else did, right?
“Good to hear,” Adam responds, exhaling slightly as he ends the call and swiftly executes the trade on his phone.
“What’s Polygon?”
“A newer cryptocurrency.”
“How much did you invest?”
“A few million.”
I burst into laughter, caught off guard. “You’re kidding, right?” The nonchalance in his tone. It’s wild. He gives my hand a squeeze. “Isn’t that … kind of illegal?” I ask, still processing.
He smirks, a cockiness in his eyes. “Let’s say it’s in a legal gray area.” Seeing my puzzled look, he elaborates, “The trade was made through a Cayman Islands account. No conflict of interest, just a shell company doing its thing. It’s not like I’m trading Harris Ventures’ money.”
“Sounds gray,” I reply dryly, my mind reeling at how casually he can throw millions around. Like, I get that he’s rich, but seeing him move money so effortlessly. Fuck.
“That’s the cryptosphere for you.” He shrugs.
“You’re gambling a few million dollars like it’s nothing?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around the scale of what happened.
“It’s nothing,” he says, and his wealth hits me like a freight train.
“Casual,” I deadpan, masking how I would like to react.
“Dani,” he says more seriously. “It’s situations like this that the NDA is for. I don’t want people knowing where my focus is or what I’m investing in.”
Feeling a bit guilty for laughing earlier, I nod in understanding. His relationship with Declan lingers in my mind though. I want to refrain from digging deeper but can’t. “You said you’re friends with Declan.”
“I see myself more as his mentor. He’s ambitious, a real go-getter,” Adam says, his eyes drifting to the road ahead. “I wish he’d unwind a bit and enjoy a drink occasionally.”
“So, I’m sure you know about his past?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Adam says. “It’s good golf gossip—dirty money and his connection to the Polish Mafia. I’ve always liked the guy. He’s a straight shooter, knows what he wants, and gets it.”
Declan’s involvement with the mafia is more than good golf gossip.
“All money has its shadows,” Adam muses. “In this global economy, it’s hard to trace every dollar’s origin.”
“You don’t care?”
“I’m focused on getting deals done.”
“Ignorance is bliss, I suppose,” I say, deflecting the topic as Adam chuckles. Then, curiosity creeps in, and I ask, “Did you guys talk about me? After I saw him at the cottage.”
“No. This is the first I’ve heard from him since.”
We’re on the topic. Now is the time to talk about it—Shirts. I take a deep breath, rubbing my face, thinking of the best way to say all of this.
“I know you’ve been wanting to talk about Shirts … Declan and crypto are part of it.”
Adam raises a questioning eyebrow, yet his grip on the steering wheel tightens.
“What?” I ask, not understanding his reaction.
“Is this where you tell me that you two dated?”
“Dated?” I laugh. “You already asked me that.”
“I originally thought you two had slept together at some point.”
“Oh my God, no.” I laugh even harder. “We’ve exchanged maybe ten sentences, total.”
The relief so clearly spreads across Adam’s face. Then, my internal monologue calls me out. We’ve exchanged more than ten sentences. And every one has made my heart race.
“So, Shirts,” I sigh, shaking my head, not wanting to talk about this fresh wound. “I started the company with my cofounder, Derek. We knew each other casually before going into business, but the last three years, we’ve spent more time together than anyone else.”
“Wait, were you dating him too?” Adam asks, clearly amused with himself.
“Please,” I sass. “I would never date a trust fund guy, and I’m definitely not going into business with one again.”
“But I’m a trust fund guy,” Adam says softly.
“You’re different.” I giggle. “You built Harris Ventures. You work hard. Derek didn’t.” We exchange a flirty look. “See, I can be nice,” I tease, lightly swatting his arm. “Derek ran production and operations. I handled all the marketing.”
“And it was very good marketing,” Adam says, smiling, squeezing my hand.
“I like to think so.” I smirk. I squirm in my seat, needing to get more comfortable before diving into the last three years of my life.
Sitting pretzel style in my bucket seat, I begin, “We had early success with celebrity and influencer gifting. Then we did more strategic social media ads, using photos from notable customers. The media also loved the brand because it had every sustainable and fair-trade buzzword. We intentionally made the company PR gold in that way. I fully trusted Derek in the beginning. I never looked at anything outside of marketing and stayed in my lane. But then I noticed things were not adding up. Our inventory did not correlate with the number of orders being processed. As I started digging into it, I realized that we were fucked. Not just in a we were unprofitable way, but in a his family was using our bank account as, like, a clearinghouse, I guess? There was a lot of money being moved in and out of the account that had nothing to do with our business.”
“I’m also learning the books are a nightmare,” Adam says. “His family …”
He also knows about Derek’s family? Like, how they got their money.
“Leaving the company isn’t the worst part for me,” I share. “It’s that I spent three years making an entry-level salary, vesting my stock options, hoping we’d sell.”
“We valued you at what—eight and a half million?”
“Yeah. There was a moment in time when I was so excited, thinking I could make a million if we kept growing and sold. But now there’s nothing to sell.”
“Did you want to leave Shirts before you did?” he asks, grabbing my hand.
“Yeah, but four years?—”
“Is the standard vesting schedule,” he interrupts, winking. Of course, I don’t have to explain startup nuances to Adam fucking Harris.
He lifts my hand, kissing the back of it. “Sounds like you learned a few things. That’s worth a lot. Trust me.”
“Not enough. What hurts the most is I put in a hundred grand a few months ago, when we hit a cash flow crunch, before I knew about all the bullshit. And I did it without any repayment terms.”
“What?” Adam’s face hardens with intensity.
“It was stupid, I know.”
He places his fingers over his lips, looking deep in thought. “Where did you get a hundred thousand dollars?”
I make a nervous sound, hoping this part doesn’t make things weird between us. “Declan.”
Adam’s eyebrows shoot up as he looks over at me.
“Since you’re so curious about my relationship with Declan,” I tease, then giggle at the absurdity of saying “relationship.” “Let me start from the beginning. It’s the most messed-up story you’ll ever hear, but you promised not to judge me for my past.”
“Okay?” He looks at me, unsure. “I’m ready.”
I take a deep breath. We still have so much time trapped together in this car, but it’s time to get this all out there.
“So, I met Declan five years ago. I was at this bar, it’s actually a one-minute walk from the cottage. It’s called Charlie’s. Declan bought me a drink; I didn’t know who he was, but he knew who I was … and who I was to Sorin.”
“His half-brother and piece of shit,” Adam mutters.
“Right. My relationship with Sorin was getting weird and the night I met Declan, it made things worse.” I hesitate, thinking about how this conversation will be such an emotional dump for me to say and for Adam to process.
“That night, Declan got me caught in a lie with Sorin. I had said I was at my parents’ house, but then Declan called him, saying he was with me at the bar. It was the first night Sorin hit me.”
“Dani,” Adam says, almost in disbelief.
“Let me get through this. It’s only going to get worse.
” Adam squeezes my hand, turning on the cruise control for the highway driving, giving me more of his attention.
“The next time I saw Declan was at Kent Dubois’s house.
He was explaining to me how Sorin was hurting their family business and about how crypto would make them all legit and clean all their money.
” I pause, hating reliving these memories.
“I got caught in another lie,” I start, leaving out a detail Adam doesn’t need to know. How Declan came on to me that night. “I didn’t mention seeing Declan at the party, and Sorin got a photo of us talking, which …” I pause. What will Adam think of this last detail?
“That lie led to Sorin carving an S in my hip with a knife.” I say it with more ease than I probably should, but it is what it is.
“What the fuck!” Adam looks at me, tense.
“I know. I still can’t believe I got myself into a situation where a man attempted to fucking carve his ownership into me.”
“Where’s the scar?”
“I got it lasered away. It took a lot of lasering, but good as new.” I flash Adam an awkward smile. “After that night, after Sorin did that, Declan did something for me. Well, he did two things for me. First, I’m pretty sure he broke Sorin’s legs after I left him for good.”
“Dani, why didn’t you tell me this when he was at the cottage?” Adam’s reaction is visceral.
“I just met you. Even telling you all this now is weird, but you know Declan so well, and I want to explain how I know him.”
“You said he did two things. What’s the other thing?” The tension in his voice is unmissable.
“We had a brief conversation before I left for my study abroad, and he told me to go to this vineyard. So, I did. And there, a guy gave me twenty-one Bitcoin. It was the strangest thing but I figured it was, like, hush money to not talk about everything I learned about their family.”
I feel a bit guilty leaving out the fact that it was also my twenty-first birthday. But the Bitcoin, it’s always felt like hush money. I’ve never talked about Sorin or Declan’s mafia affiliation with anyone until now.
“Twenty-one? That’s worth, like, a half million today. What happened?”
“I converted it to cash before it skyrocketed.”
“What year did you get it?” Adam asks after a moment of taking all of that in.
“Two thousand seventeen.”
“The Cryptoball platform was in idea mode then,” Adam shares. “How did you get the Bitcoin?”
“I got a hard drive and had to figure it all out.”
“Analogue,” Adam says, nearly under his breath, his face taking in everything I said.
In the silence, I continue, “And he’s never talked to me since then.
I texted him, thanking him for the gift, and he never responded.
” My internal monologue calls me out again.
I so casually left out how I sent him some flirty texts and other texts over the years.
“I never heard or saw him until the other day … At the cottage.”
“Now, I understand why both of you reacted like fish out of water seeing each other.” Adam squeezes my hand. “At least I know he isn’t gay.”
“That’s what you took from this story,” I say, annoyed.
“I’ve never seen him give anyone a second look.”
My memory replays Declan and my few moments of flirtation. If he were interested, he would have texted me back. He would have reached out to me at any point over the last few years.
“I’m just saying Declan is in the Crows, which is affiliated with the Polish Mafia.” My tone has an unmistakable edge. “So, factor that into your business dealings with him.”
Adam nods to himself for a moment, and I want to end this conversation. “That’s how I got the hundred grand. That’s how I know Declan, and that pretty much sums up the last five years of my life and why I’m broke, living with my parents.”
“I think you’re incredible.” Adam smiles. “Most people never take a big risk. The money you lost, don’t think of it as a loss. Think of it as the best MBA you could have ever gotten. Real business experience is worth more than any classroom setting.”
I roll my eyes.
“I’m serious. You are very impressive.”
I flash a smile. It definitely means something coming from him.
“With Shirts, your instincts were right. The product was right. But it wasn’t the right partner. The right partner is everything.”
“I’m learning.”
“Look at who you’re with right now. I think you’re learning pretty fast.”