Chapter 15
MARI
Iwake in the penthouse and stare at a skyline that feels heavy and far away.
I can’t keep doing this, flinching at every knock and waiting for Lev to go cold and lethal.
It’s not just me anymore. I have a child to protect now.
Maybe. I still haven’t decided what to do about the baby, but either way I can’t stay here and let Lev control everything.
I start small, coffee and then my calendar. I take my phone to the bathroom, turn the fan on, and run the water. I open a private browser, because it’s clear my computer is hacked. I can only hope they’re not monitoring my phone, too.
I look for cities where it’s easy to disappear.
Denver, Austin, and Seattle stand out as top options, mostly because they’re so far away.
I star jobs that fit my qualifications and find hospitals with good OB-GYNs, just in case.
I create a blank résumé and strip out the experience that ties me to him.
I set up a new Gmail account and generate a new phone number with an app.
I have to deal with the money issue next.
They’re watching me 24/7, so I can’t make withdrawals from an ATM anymore.
I reroute a sliver of my direct deposit to an old credit union I used in college and request a digital prepaid card that can’t be traced back to me.
My heart pounds. It could all come down to one tiny detail.
One small slip and everything could fall apart.
At work, I open spreadsheets and keep my face neutral. I answer emails with one-word replies and say “fine” when people ask how I’m doing.
I should hate Lev. He’s a controlling, impossible tyrant who treats me like an object, not a person. He’s a jerk, but he’s my jerk. The thought slips in when I’m not paying attention.
It started when he filled a water bottle and left it outside my door so I wouldn’t have to go to the kitchen in the middle of the night.
At first, I was annoyed that he was still watching so closely, still controlling me so completely.
But then I realized it was all he could do to show he was paying attention.
He cares about me in his weird, controlling way.
But small gestures don’t change the fact that I have to leave. I can’t keep living with the fear that he’s going to find out about the baby. The fewer ties I have to him when this is all over, the better.
I turn my focus to my work. I’ve been mapping the embezzlement, going through old ledgers to make sense of everything I’m seeing. I’ve added new columns to the master ledger and started trawling through old reports for any inconsistencies.
At noon I compare invoices from two shell vendors that supposedly supply “premium finishes.” The shell names are so legitimate that whoever set them up is smart enough to rob a bank in broad daylight.
Checks were cut with dummy numbers, split across subsidiaries, reconciled with careful bookkeeping most people would miss.
But the dummy numbers show a pattern, and I’m able to crack the code.
By one, I’ve mapped out the transactions.
Not all of them, but enough. The siphon started three years ago.
It started small, twenty-five grand here, fifty there.
Then it jumped. Last summer, a run of transfers was made between accounts that don’t belong to us but somehow slipped past our company controls, and then fees ate the trail.
Whoever’s doing this is good. Clever and arrogant in equal measure.
I pull up the pivot table one more time, and there it is.
Five million, give or take, redistributed across “renovations” that were never made and “consulting” that never happened.
I take a screenshot and save it to a drive only I can access.
My hands shake and I flatten them on my thighs. Five million is a lot of money.
If I hand this to Lev, he’ll go savage. If I don’t, he’ll only be more suspicious of me. I can’t afford that right now. I thought I was good at hiding my intentions, but he clearly sees right through me. If I’m not careful, he’s going to find out about the baby.
At three, one of my new guards knocks on the glass and jerks his chin. Lev wants me. He says it like a request, but we both know it’s a command. Lev doesn’t like to be kept waiting. I grab my laptop and follow the guy down the hall.
Lev’s in his office with the door open. He doesn’t say anything when I step in. He points at the chair across from him, and I sit. My ears ring in the silence. He scrolls through something on his screen, frowning. The stupid part of me wishes I could do something to cheer him up.
His phone rings. He answers in Russian and slips into that calm, deadly tone I’ve come to recognize. He stopped bothering to hide this stuff when I moved in. I’m the one keeping secrets now.
He finally looks up at me.
“Do you have a progress report?”
“I found something,” I admit. “You have a leak. A big one.”
He nods once at my laptop, the closest he’ll ever get to asking for permission.
I spin it around and pull up the fractal model I built.
“Here,” I say, tracing the first path, then the second. “The shell names are clean. The approvals are forged. The check numbers are the tell. They’re fake. They don’t match any of the accounts in our ledger.”
“How much is missing?” he asks, his voice flat.
“Five million,” I answer, my mouth drying. “So far. It could be more if they’re hiding it somewhere I haven’t mapped yet.”
“Who?” he asks, his whole body tight with barely controlled tension.
“I don’t know,” I say, hating how the words sound. “Whoever it is has been with the company for at least three years. Probably longer.”
“Five million,” he repeats to no one in particular.
He’s furious in his quiet, dangerous way.
If the perpetrator were in the room right now, they’d probably confess on the spot out of sheer terror.
Then again, they’d have to be pretty ballsy to steal this much money in the first place.
Either they think Lev’s reputation is all bravado, or they’re even scarier than he is.
“I can keep digging,” I say. “I can pull IP traces on the approvals, scrub the user logs, see who was in the system at the exact minute of the pushes. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll narrow the list.”
He exhales once through his nose. “Do it.”
I nod.
He stands and walks to the window, phone in his hand, and I can tell by the way his jaw sets that he’s about to make a phone call that will ruin someone’s day. Maybe even their life. I close my laptop and hold it against my chest like a shield.
“Anything else?” he asks, eyes on the city.
The word baby claws up my throat. I want to shout it, let the pieces fall where they may. The anxiety is eating at me.
“I have a dentist appointment,” I say instead, and I hate myself for how easy it is to lie. “I need to leave a little early today.”
He glances over, checking my face for the lie. His expression doesn’t change, so I have no idea what he’s thinking.
“Fine,” he says, waving a hand like he’s clearing a small file off his desk. “Thom and Jareth will escort you.”
“I figured,” I say, and I stand before I lose my nerve.
He’s already dialing as I step out. I go back to my office and gather my things, sending a text to my guards about the change in schedule.
Jareth is waiting when I step into the hall. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than escorting me to the “dentist.” I don’t blame him. I force a smile, and he flinches like I might throw something at him. He’s only been on my detail for two days, but my reputation clearly precedes me.
We ride down the elevator in silence. He stands between me and the doors when they open, the same defensive pose they all take. I can never tell if they do that to protect me or to stop me from running. Either way, it feels oppressive.
The dental office is on the twelfth floor of a large medical building. The OB-GYN is on the fourteenth. Jareth stays in the car, and I convince Thom to wait in the building lobby.
“You’re tracking my phone,” I remind him. “It’s not like I’m leaving this building without you knowing.”
“Text me when you’re done,” he says gruffly.
“I will,” I say, and head to the elevator.
In the OB-GYN’s lobby, the receptionist asks for insurance, and I hand her my card with a shaky hand.
I sit in a chair far from the windows and pull out my phone.
I text Thom that I’m in the waiting room and send him a picture of me sitting in the chair, making sure there are no identifiers in the background.
For good measure, I throw up my middle finger.
When they call my name, I stand so fast it makes me dizzy. The nurse is kind in that way that makes me want to cry. I follow her into a small room and sit on the crinkly paper.
“What brings you in today?” she asks.
“I’d like to get a pregnancy test,” I tell her. “I took two home tests and they were positive, but I just want to be sure.”
She nods as she scribbles something on her clipboard. “I’ll have the doctor order the tests, and we’ll be back in a few minutes.”
After that, everything happens pretty quickly. I pee in a cup and they draw blood. A few minutes later, a doctor knocks on the door to tell me the urine test was positive and they’ll have the blood test results back within twenty-four hours.
“Thank you,” I say, and I grip the edge of the table until my fingers ache. “Please make sure to use the cell number and not the work number.”
I gave them the cloned number I got from an app. It’s the only way I can be sure Lev can’t listen in on my calls.
“We’ll call the number you gave,” she says softly. “Do you feel safe?”
“Yes,” I lie, because the truth is way too complicated. “I’m okay.”
She hands me a stack of pamphlets that I stuff into the bottom of my purse. Just to make sure none of the guys try to search inside, I grab a handful of tampons from the bathroom and throw them in. They’re the ultimate man deterrent.
I have a lot to think about and a lot of plans to make. If I’m going to successfully get away from Lev, I’ve got to start collecting hard proof of what’s going on in the company so I can use it as leverage.