Chapter 3—Willow
When I was working, I didn’t have time to freak out about meeting with the boss one-on-one. But the second I step onto the elevator and my badge grants me access to the top floor, the nerves start to eat at me.
I’ve never been up here before. There was never a need to. The interviews were on the fifth floor, and the seventh was the highest I’ve ever been. Until today.
The elevator doors open, and I take a deep breath before I exit.
There are so many windows on one side and office doors on the other.
And at the end of the hall is Mr. Leone’s…
bodyguard? Assistant? I don’t know what he does, but he carries himself as if he’s five seconds from pulling a gun on anyone who looks at him the wrong way.
He nods at me when I get close and doesn’t say anything when I stand outside Mr. Leone’s door for a solid three minutes without knocking, just staring at the hardwood door.
Three solid minutes that take me from complete freak-out to steadying my nerves enough to announce myself with a small knock.
One that Mr. Leone answers immediately with a deep voice that resonates through the closed door.
“Come in.”
I quickly open his door and enter, closing it behind me with a soft click.
His office is spacious and exactly what I would expect for someone who runs a multimillion-dollar business without blinking an eye.
A large desk, a few chairs, and a ton of bookshelves, but none of them tall enough to block his view.
The only wall without windows is the one with the door.
Everything else offers a complete view of the city, but with a film on the windows to prevent feeling the heat of the sun.
I bet on foggy days, he doesn’t even see the ground.
I’ve never feared heights, but I get an uneasy feeling near the windows. This isn’t the tallest building in the city, but it’s tall enough for me to worry.
“Here you go.” I hand him the paper copies I printed, which took some time, but he doesn’t seem to mind that I’m eight minutes late for our meeting.
He might not have set a strict deadline, but I did.
I don’t like to miscalculate things—even time.
Everything is down to a science in my head to stay on schedule.
“I also put the files on the shared drive and can give you the direct link if you want to access them that way.”
“Thank you, Ms. Frazzer.” He stands and walks around the desk as he gestures to the round conference table off to the side. “Please have a seat.” He pulls out a chair for me, and I take it without thinking.
“Thank you.” I wait half a second for him to sit before I talk. In that time, I file away that he took off his suit jacket, and the black shirt tugs around his arms when he pulls out his own chair and sits.
“Here’s the Chandler file, and this one is the Myers.
” I separate the two and move the Chandler file in front of him.
“As you can see, I’ve highlighted in yellow the inconsistencies under a thousand, marked those under ten thousand in green, and anything higher in red.
I kept it to a three-color-coded system, but if you would prefer to do another code, I can do so on the electronic copy. ”
I put my laptop on the table and open it up, pulling up the file as I speak.
“Did you discover this, or were you alerted to it?” he asks as he briefly scans the papers before him.
“I was alerted to another issue that my cubicle mate, Missy, found in some duplicated fees at the end of the file.” I reach over and flick through the pages to show him what I’m talking about.
“It seems it was just a copy of what appeared on page five.” I flip to page five, and he nods in agreement.
“I didn’t want to just delete the page assuming it was the same, so I went through it all with what was expected in the official Chandler file we keep for the owner and found these inconsistencies. ”
The owner file is one we send to the client—Maxine Chandler in this case. A middle-aged, mildly wealthy widow in Illinois who has been using our services. The company manages a sizable portfolio, enough to support about ten thousand investors.
The working file is internal, where we verify everything before updating the official version.
We usually just work on one page at a time, adding to both the working file and the owner file once the working one is complete.
But in this case, there were over ten years of work to review. And over $175,000 in inconsistencies.
He hums as he spends some time looking over the file, and I check the time on my laptop.
“What about the Myers file? The same or different?”
I push it to him. “The same, except for the final amount.” I go to the last page and point to the amount I concluded was lost. Almost double the first one.
Another noncommittal noise from him before another round of flipping through the pages. I glance at the time again.
“Thank you for this.”
I nod as I look back at him, and he looks at me. “Please know you’ll be compensated for this. Now, let’s start at the beginning and go line by line.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I need to go.”
“To where?”
“The subway. My kids are with a sitter who’s only free until five.”
He checks the clock. “It’s three thirty now.”
“Yes, sir, but if I leave now, I can take the subway, then a bus, and walk the rest of the way.”
He leans back in his chair and squints. “Where does your babysitter live?”
“Brooklyn.”
He pulls his phone from his pocket and takes a moment before setting it down on the table and pulling the Chandler file back into his hands.
“I’ll have a car take you. Now, can you review this with me?”
“Sir?”
He looks up and his dark eyes bore into me, holding my attention. “I promise you’ll make it there by five.” The way he says it, it’s less like a promise and more like a certainty.
Something in his words, his focus on me, his determination—all of it. I believe him. There’s something captivating about him that at first I found intimidating. Now I see it and respect him for it.
With a nod, I lean closer and point to the first inconsistency.
I ignore the buzzing of Mr. Leone’s phone, but he doesn’t. He looks at the screen once before standing and going over to his desk to pull on his jacket, all without breaking stride with his words.
“Based on your analysis, you’ve concluded that while the files go back ten years, issues didn’t occur until five years ago?”
“That’s correct. Small inconsistencies before that, but those are in the base average for being normal human error. What I found seems to have started small but grew over time, as noted earlier when we went over the files.”
I expected Mr. Leone to be smart—you don’t run a company based on good looks, which he definitely has—but I was in awe of how quickly he grasped the knowledge in full and understood it completely.
My own boss, who’s meant to understand these data points better than most, since he’s in charge of the sector, fails at this.
Meaning he should have worked from the ground up.
The Leone business is very well known for promoting within and not hiring outside management unless all other options are exhausted to find the best candidate for the position.
“Right. We can finish this in the car.” He closes my laptop and picks up the files we were looking over.
“Sir?” I swivel in my chair as he walks around me.
“I’m a man who keeps appointments, and I make sure those who have them keep them as well. Plus, my mother would never forgive me if she found out I made a mother late picking up her kids, especially after working on a Saturday.”
How bad of a mother does it make me look that it takes more time than it should for his words to sink in and remind me I have to get home? Bad, right?
“Right. Of course. Thank you for remembering.”
I grab my small tote purse and move to step in line with Mr. Leone. I instinctively hold out my hands for the documents, but he just opens the door for me and gestures for me to go out first.
We walk to the elevator and down to the lobby. I go to sign out, but a hand on my back keeps me moving toward the exit.
“Marco already took care of that for us,” he says as if that makes sense to anyone who knows who Marco is.
“And Marco is who?” I look at the security guard manning the desk who’d risen when we exited the elevator. His name tag clearly says Jimmy, so it wasn’t him.
Mr. Leone holds the next door for me as he gestures with his chin to the waiting car parked in front of the building. His friend from earlier is holding the door open for us.
“Marco, my second.”
Second to what? is on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t ask. I give a grateful smile to the man and enter the back seat. I scoot far over to allow Mr. Leone to take up the other side of the seat.
“Vinny called. He asks that you stop by to discuss a matter.”
Bobby just nods at the man before he turns to me. “What’s the address?” he asks as he finally gives me my laptop but keeps the papers to himself.
I put the computer in my bag as I rattle off the address. I don’t fear him knowing where I live—I’m no one special, and he has better things to do than focus on me as anything but a worker. He also has a very respectable reputation. He’s focused on work and nothing else.
“15th Street between Bedford and Nostrand. Pink building. Can’t miss it.”
“Marco” is all he says to the other man, who climbed into the driver’s seat after closing us in.
Marco nods, and we’re off.
I barely have time to enjoy the luxury car, focused on talking more on the details of what we were discussing.
“From your analyses, what do you think this means?”
I rub my hands over my skirt and desperately wish I hadn’t worn heels, as the pinch in my toes keeps mocking me as the day keeps going.
“Honestly, sir?” I take a moment to look him in the eyes as I tell him what I suspect he’s already figured out. “I think someone’s stealing from you.”
He nods. “So do I. Did Mr. Folly ask you to look at any other files or just this one after you went to him about the first?” He’s pointing to the Myers file, tapping it as it sits on his lap, and I absently note how strong and thick his fingers look.
An odd thing to focus on right now, but it’s stuck in my brain, and my eyes continue to focus on them as I shake my head.
“He made it seem like there were others he wanted me to look at, but he didn’t name any specific files. Just said I’ll have another one each week for a while. He pulled me off the other tasks I was working on to focus on these for the foreseeable future.”
His fingers stop tapping and smooth out flat on the paper, and I blink out of my trance to look up at him. He’s looking at me, but there’s nothing in his face that gives me a clue about what he’s thinking.
“Anyone else know about these?”
I shrug. “Maybe. I didn’t keep what I was doing a secret, and Spencer—I mean, Mr. Folly would ask about them in front of others all the time. Wondering when I would get done so I could start on the next. He made it seem like you were needing them all done by a certain deadline.”
“We’re here,” Marco announces a second before the car stops. I blink and look out the window. Time passes so fast that any embarrassment I might have had about a fancy town car going through my poor neighborhood is moot.
I quickly grab my things and exit before Marco has the chance to open my door. “Thank you, sir, for the ride. I appreciate it.”
I shut the door and wince as I turn my back to it. I probably should have done a better job of ending a conversation with my boss’s boss, but I panicked the second we stopped. Too late now to do anything that wouldn’t make me look crazier than he probably thinks I am.
I take several steps away and make my way up the stairs to the apartment building Mrs. Carlton lives in, then ring her buzzer. As I wait for my girls to come down, I ignore the fact that I know the car is still behind me. That it hasn’t driven away at all.
The door opens in front of me, and any worry I have is gone the second Lily smiles at me.
“Mommy!” She launches herself at me, and I stumble a bit but keep us from falling down the stairs.
“Hey, baby girl. Did you have fun?” I say as I set her down.
“Yes. Mrs. Carlton had new coloring books, and I got to paint these.” She opens her backpack and shows me what appears to be an entire roll of printer paper in her bag, with colorful “art” on all of them. Not many with colors inside the lines, but I get the gist of it and smile with glee.
“We’ll have to pick our favorites and put them up on the fridge.”
“Help, please.” Ivy’s muffled request is hidden behind a cardboard box that’s almost bigger than she is.
“Oh my goodness, what is this?” I move Lily a little to the side and take the box.
“It’s my project. I picked the jerboa to do a report on. I have to bring a diorama with facts about them and their habitat. Mrs. Carlton and I were working on the background all afternoon.”
We take the steps down, and both girls stop when I see that Mr. Leone and Marco have exited the car and are standing in front of us.
“Can we give you a ride?” Mr. Leone asks and gestures to the car behind him.
“Wow. A real giant,” Lily whispers as she stares up at Marco with all the wonder a child can have.
I cough to keep from laughing at the surprise that hits Marco’s face instead of the scowl I expected. “That’s not necessary. We just live across the street.”
“Then let us help.” Mr. Leone takes the project from me easily, as I’m too in shock at his offer to protest. He moves to one side of us and Marco the other as we start to walk across the street. Instinctively, I grab the girls’ hands.
“Who are they, Mommy?” Lily asks, and not at all in a whisper.
“This is Mr. Leone, Lily. My boss. Please be nice. Mr. Leone, these are my girls, Lily and Ivy.” I raise each girl’s hand to show which one is which.
“I mean the giant,” she says as her eyes go back to Marco.
“Who, him?” Mr. Leone gives my girls the side-eye, but I see his mischievous smile, and it’s infectious. “He’s my protector.”
My first thought is the same one that Ivy has: “Why?”
But it’s Lily who draws the focus.
“Wow. Can he be mine too?”
Marco stops on the other side of the street and looks down at her with narrowed eyes. “What do you need protection from?”
“Dragons.”