Jimmy

“Jimmy?”

I looked up from my desk and saw Ashley standing there with her red hair piled high on her head and her glasses sliding down her nose. No matter what she wore and no matter what day it was, she never ceased to take my breath away. She had on this flowing summer dress with matching flats and a cardigan thrown over her shoulders. But there was something in her eyes that made me nervous.

“What is it, Ashley?”

“There’s something I need to talk with you about,” she said.

“Sure. Come in and sit down.”

She stepped in and closed the door, her shoulders hunched over a bit. Nerves began bubbling in my stomach as I stood up from my chair. Was she okay? Had something happened with her mother? She turned back around and started for the chair in front of my desk, her fingers twirling in her cardigan. She was chewing on her lower lip, and her eyes were darting around the room. It was the first time Ashley had ever looked fearfully uncomfortable in my office.

Holy hell, was she about to break up with me?

I started panicking. I sat on the edge of my desk and tried to keep my cool, but inside, I was freaking out. If Nina had ruined this for me, I would never forgive her. I would come down on her with a fury and light her ass up. And if for some ungodly reason, Nina had pulled something to stress Ashley out from beyond her holding cell, I would make sure that woman never saw the light of day again. She didn’t get to ruin my life because she got too greedy with my money. She didn’t get to ruin the best thing to ever happen to me because I’d ended our arrangement.

That wasn’t how this worked.

“Ashley, you’re worrying me. What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I need to talk with you about these,” she said.

She dipped into the bag around her shoulders and pulled out some files. The manila folders had the balance sheets hanging out of them, and I could see they were all marked up. She sat down in the chair and handed them to me, my arm stretching out for the files.

Was this all she wanted to talk about? Why was it making her so nervous?

“You finished them,” I said.

“I did, but it took me awhile because of all the discrepancies.”

“Discrepancies?” I asked.

“Take a look.”

Her fingers were still fiddling with her cardigan as I put the folders on my desk. I picked one up and began to flip through it, my eyes scanning all the notes. There were arrows and plus signs and minus signs and numbers. Words like “stocks and bonds” and “withdrawals” and a bunch of circles around the letters L.R. I furrowed my brow as I flipped through the pages, taking in how many notes Ashley had made in the margins.

“What is all this?” I asked.

“These balance sheets are from the past couple of years at the company.”

“It looks like a whole lot more,” I said.

“I printed them all out in a bunch larger print so I could be sure of the numbers.”

“There are a lot of notes here. No wonder it took you so long.”

“And I went back all the way to the start of the company.”

I rose my eyes to Ashley and quirked an eyebrow. She had printed off all the balance sheets since the inception of the company twelve years ago?

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the discrepancies are everywhere. Back before you promoted me, Mr. Brent had me going through all this stuff. I figured there was an issue with the algorithm in the Excel spreadsheet, so I made a note of it and sent it back.”

“But then he brought them to you again,” I said.

“Yes. With a note telling me there was nothing wrong with the Excel spreadsheet. So I kept digging and kept making notations, and they go all the way back, Jimmy. There are small amounts of money transferred into random stock accounts and small amounts withdrawn too. Other amounts that come out of nowhere are put into those stock accounts before they disappear. The total of any one transaction never breaches fifty dollars, and the totals at the end of the balance sheets are correct. But the actual numbers used to get to that total are wrong. I notated everything on the sheets.”

“I see that,” I said.

“I know it looks confusing, but if you tally all of it up, over twenty million dollars have been toggled.”

I almost swallowed my tongue at the number.

“What?” I asked.

“The only connection I can find are the initials L.R. It’s attached to most of the transactions.”

“Not all of them?” I asked.

“No. The first three years of the company don’t have usernames attached to the transactions, but after that, L.R. starts popping up. I tried tracking the person down, trying to figure out who it could be. It was why it took me so long. I’m sorry, Jimmy.”

“No need to be sorry,” I said as I picked up another file.

“I went down to the tech department and looked through everything. The hardware’s only been updated once, and both you and Ross signed off on it. I checked all the algorithms in the software myself, and nothing was wrong. It’s not the technology, Jimmy. Someone’s messing with the company’s money.”

“This was the source of your stress over the past week, wasn’t it?” I asked.

I watched Ashley look down into her lap as I sighed.

“Ashley, I’m not upset with you.”

“I tried figuring out who L.R. could be, but none of what I found made sense. I figured it might’ve been Nina, but nothing links back to her in any way. Then, I pulled up the past and present company logs, and no one with the initials L.R. or R.L. make any sense. One worked for HR two years ago, one was Ross’s personal assistant for a few months, and the other is a child of someone in the Public Relations department.”

“You did all of that over this past week,” I said.

“I also have to apologize to you,” she said.

“Why?”

“Remember when I told you something was wrong with my mother?” she asked.

I watched her heave a heavy sigh as I grinned.

“Your mother was fine, wasn’t she?”

“I needed an excuse to do a little more digging. I took the balance sheets home with me and finished off the tallies. I didn’t want to worry you because this is a job I technically started before I was promoted, and I got this position because of my initiative, and with everything that happened in the press a couple of weeks ago—”

I set the folder on the desk and pushed myself away from it. I took Ashley’s hand in mine, silencing her cute little ramble. I pulled her up to her feet, wrapped my arm around her, and pulled her to me for a gentle kiss. Her hands settled on my hips as I held her closely, allowing my tongue to swipe out and touch her lips. The way she groaned into me, melting into my embrace, it sent my mind spiraling.

“You’re remarkable,” I said.

“I’m sorry for lying to you and keeping this from you,” Ashley said.

“As far as I’m concerned, you were doing your job. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”

“Do you have any idea who L.R. could be? It’s not a username I recognize from anyone in the Accounting department over the past four years.”

“I have no idea. I have some things I could take a look at myself, but nothing immediately comes to mind.”

“Do you think Ross might know?”

“You could ask him, but I doubt it.”

I looked down into Ashley’s big green eyes, but my nerves weren’t abating. Twenty million dollars was a serious amount of money. I had to figure out where the hell that money was going. I had to figure out who the fuck was stealing from my company. I understood why Nina was Ashley’s first suspect, but if this had been going on for years, Nina wasn’t a possibility. She’d only been in my life for two years, and though she was a conniving bitch, she wasn’t smart enough to orchestrate something like this.

My gut reaction was that it was someone on the inside, but who the hell had I employed for that long?

“I’ll talk to Ross and see if he can think of anyone off the top of his head. You get back to work,” I said.

“Jimmy, I should’ve come to you wish this sooner. I’m sorry,” Ashley said.

“As your boss, I have to reprimand you. Yes, you should’ve come to me the moment you realized these discrepancies weren’t technological or formulaic. I appreciate you taking the initiative, but I didn’t hire you to be a detective. I hired you to be the investor’s accountant.”

“Yes, sir.”

“As your significant other? Thank you for putting in all that work. I appreciate you being concerned about how this would affect me. I’ll take this to Ross. Now let me make some phone calls,” I said.

I dismissed Ashley from my office and watched her walk back into hers. She seemed to stand a little taller, and her hands were no longer twisted up in her cardigan. That was enough for me right now. I had greater things to tend to if I was going to continue spending my evenings with her, however, which meant I had to redirect.

“Knock, knock.” Ross poked his head into my office.

“Just the man I wanted to see. Get in here,” I said.

“Everything okay? Things seemed pretty tense in here with you and Ashley,” he said.

“Do the initials L.R. mean anything to you?” I asked.

“Uh, left-right?”

“A person’s initials?” I asked.

“Lionel Richie?”

“Come on, Ross. Be serious.”

“What’s this about?” he asked.

“Twenty million dollars, that’s what.”

“I’m not following.”

“Remember me reprimanding Mr. Brent for slapping those balance sheets on Ashley’s desk a few days ago?”

“What’s going on, Jimmy?”

“She found some issues she says date all the way back to the beginning of the company.”

I picked up a folder and handed it to Ross for him to look at. The moment he flipped it open, his eyes grew wide. He was taking in all of Ashley’s notes and running the calculations in his head. He flipped sheet after sheet, his hands gripping the folder so hard, his knuckles were turning white.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Ashley said the initials L.R. are attached to just about every one of the faulty transactions too,” I said.

“We need to check employee records,” Ross said.

“She already did that. Past and present.”

“Is it possible this is Nina?”

“Not if it dates back more than a couple of years.”

“Jimmy, this is serious.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I asked. “None of the transactions breaches fifty dollars at a time, and the ending totals for the balance sheets are what they’re supposed to be, according to Ashley. It would be easy for someone to overlook that, especially with all the work we throw at our Accounting department.”

“That’s still no excuse. You mean to tell me no one caught this in the twelve years we’ve been active?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Ross, I don’t fucking know. I’ve got a couple of places I could look to make sense of the initials, but that’s literally all I have at my disposal without involving the police.”

“I’m sure the IT department can help us out with this. We have a cybersecurity department for a reason, Jimmy. I’ll go down there and see what I can figure out.”

“Thanks. I’ve got some more employee records I can scour,” I said.

“Meet back here at the end of the day?” he asked.

“See you then.”