The day for the meeting finally arrived.

I had to force myself back to the real world, and back to this case that had burdened my mind.

We were in the largest meeting room.

Mrs. Denman sat opposite us with Jude Kennedy, her lawyer.

I’d met Jude in court before and knew the guy was a badass lawyer. He wiped the floor with me a few years back, but hadn’t managed to do it since.

I’d watched him with Mrs. Denman.

I could feel her nerves. She had the typical victim look. Haggard and drained.

Devon on the other hand sat beside me, smug like some kingpin who owned everything.

Summer sat at the desk in the corner with her computer ready to take the minutes. Jude’s PA sat opposite her doing the same.

Summer glanced across at me and gave me a little smile. It helped and reminded me what I had to look forward to later.

It was a slow day for us. We decided that because we didn’t know how this meeting was going to flair out.

“Are we all ready to get started?” I asked opening the floor. We’d been sitting her for about five minutes getting what we needed ready.

“We’re ready.” Jude replied.

“Good.” Here goes. I pulled in a breath. “We’ve looked at your clients demands and have decided to offer a refund of the money that was paid for the investment as a gesture of goodwill.”

Jude immediately looked pissed off. “Are you kidding? You’re client’s company had a duty of care to make sure they looked into what mine was investing in. She lost more than what she paid out, and she’s unable to work because of it.”

“Mrs. Denman signed a disclaimer, she knew what she was getting into. It’s unreasonable to expect my client to do anything more. He shouldn’t even have to offer a refund.” That was my best argument.

“A disclaimer is nothing. There was a duty of care here to at least make sure what she was putting her money into was suitable for her. Even if no further advice was given. My client relied on the information she was given and bought stocks in a company that hadn’t been assessed properly in terms of their longevity. The shares plummeted after a few weeks. That’s crazy.” Jude fumed, looking at me as if I should have seen the incredulity of that. “It’s a little suspicious don’t you think?”

My skin felt numb. Jude couldn’t have been more right. But I wasn’t here to agree with him.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, but investments are risky. When you invest you take a risk. We all know and accept that.” I straightened up and squared my shoulders. “What happened to Mrs. Denman is very unfortunate, and I sympathize, but I don’t agree that my client exercised any form of ill will or misconduct. If anything he went above and beyond himself to exercise customer care.”

I felt like such an asshole for saying that. Saying what I didn’t believe. And… all the while Devon sat next to me with his stupid smug face like he had this in the bag.

“You know this is wrong, Alex.” Jude held my gaze.

“I’m not here to decide what is wrong or right. I’m here to set out what happened within the realms of the law. A disclaimer was signed showing me a conversation must have taken place to highlight that my client would not be held responsible for any losses on a risky new investment. She was provided with a copy of all the terms and conditions, and information on the investment. That is fact. I’m arguing fact. You are arguing ethics.”

Jude pressed his lips together. “This has mishandling written all over it. There were no steps taken to ensure the investment was suitable, and nothing was ever mentioned about the extra riskiness of this particular investment.”

“Mrs. Denman was contacted and informed of a great investment opportunity that was expected to have a great return. At the time the market showed that it did. If I said the same about fluff because some celeb had made it popular, you’d probably invest too. It would be no one’s fault if the fluff took a nose dive days later and became worthless because another celeb made something else popular. It’s just how the market works.”

“Right, well I guess this has to be settled in court then.” Jude nodded, eyeing me with dismay.

I knew this would happen.

It was only when Devon heard that that he shuffled next to me.

“I’ll give another fifteen grand.” Devon cut in just as I was about to talk. “Fifteen thousand and nothing more. It’s fair.”

“Fair?” Jude took him on. “You know it’s not. She has medical bills and loss of potential earnings. We’ll let the judge decide what’s fair.”

“Twenty,” Devon replied.

“Stop it.” I interrupted his next words.

Jude laughed. “Ridiculous. We’re done here. Seventy grand was the minimum, we’re taking this all the way with a minimum settlement of a hundred grand.”

“We’ll see you in court.” I retorted.

Mrs. Denman looked worse as they left and I saw her wipe a tear away from her eyes.

Summer gave me a worried look when she left the room too making my stomach twist into knots. She knew how I felt about the case. I hadn’t shared any of the things I’d discovered that night when I was researching, but she knew enough.

Devon twisted in his chair to face me when the door closed.

“You were supposed to keep the case out of court, Alex.” He spoke in a slow purposeful tone that infuriated me.

“What the fuck was that? Don’t undercut me ever again.” I balked. If the fool had told me before that he was willing to pay up to twenty thousand grand more I would have worked it into my argument.

It was fine though, because he’d just showed desperation which just added to my suspicions.

“You were supposed to keep the case out of court.” He blurted now, face red, and eyes blazing.

“Why are you so determined to keep it out of court?” I shot back. “What aren’t you telling me?” I decided to test and see his response.

“Nothing.” He slammed his fists down. “Just make sure this doesn’t get blown out of proportion. I’m a private man. I don’t want my company dragged through the court and the media.”

“Is that all your worried about?” I was really testing him.

His face contorted into a heavy scowl. “Look Alex, I don’t know what you’re implying or what you think I may be worried about. I simply don’t like going to court. But here we are, at the place I didn’t want to be. I know Jude, he’ll dig as far as he can to make me look bad. Don’t let that happen.”

I didn’t answer because I knew Jude too. The guy was a shark, but a little like myself. He didn’t do anything without a reason and he did what was necessary to do the right thing for his clients. Even if that meant pissing off a few people on the way.

Devon stood up, annoyed by my silence and marched out of the room slamming the door as he walked out.

I knew I’d end up feeling worse than I did before, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Was I supposed to pretend that my suspicion wasn’t through the roof?

The door opened and Summer came back inside.

“Hi.” She walked over to me.

“Come here, angel.” I took her hands and pulled her into my lap.

“Alex, if someone walks in here and sees me in your lap their going to have questions.” She smiled.

“I don’t care, baby.” I didn’t. There was so much crap going on. Summer was my compensation.

“Alex, are you okay?” Her eyes were filled with concern.

I shook my head. “No, I’m not.”

“I didn’t think so. You gave a good argument, but you didn’t believe any of what you said.”

I had to look at her, really look at her. “How’d you know?”

“I just do.” She slipped her arm around me and ran her fingers across the back of my neck. “You said you thought Devon was guilty. But you never said why.”

“You know when you get a bad feeling about something and you know that you’re right but you can’t prove it? That’s how I feel.” I answered. It was the best thing to say.

She was an attorney too, if I told her what I’d found out about the other investments she would definitely think something was weird with the situation. And worse she’d probably question me.

I didn’t want that. Work was work, and this case wasn’t me. It didn’t represent how I normally conducted myself.

“You shouldn’t work on this case if you feel that way.”

“I know, but I have to. If I don’t that will be it for me here.”

Now she looked worried. “Alex, don’t say that. I’m sure your dad will arrange something else.”

“No. He was being serious. This is it. if I don’t see this case through I can kiss the senior partnership goodbye.”

“Alex, I’m certain your dad would find some other way for you.”

I shook my head. “No, angel. He was clear.”

She moved forward and gave me a sweet kiss. “How about we do something to get your mind off this. It’s Friday. You pick.”

“Let’s just go home.”

She nodded with a smile. “Home.”

I always liked the way that she said that.

I pulled in a deep breath as Marc walked into the living room.

I planned to see him at some point this weekend anyway, probably not today because I was too wrapped up in Summer, but tomorrow. Just to hang out though for an hour or so.

I didn’t want to talk about work and he was here to do just that.

I knew I’d planted the seeds of mystery in his mind and it would only be a matter of time before he’d hunted out what he wanted to find and unearthed something.

The thing about it was, deep down I wanted to have my suspicions confirmed with evidence, but I knew my father.

I knew when he was being serious. I knew when to push him and when to fall back.

“Marc, dare I ask what you found?” I sighed dropping into the armchair.

He rolled up the long sleeves of his T-shirt that had a picture of The Flash on the front. Outside of work he reverted to his usual comic book, superhero loving self. I had to admit though that the way he did it made it cool as he’d added a pair of chinos and loafers.

“Yes.” He beamed with wide eyes. From the large white envelope he carried he pulled out a file and handed it to me.

I flicked through it. It was twenty pages long and contained details of foreign bank accounts. It wasn’t transactions just balance sheets for each bank with the remaining balance and name of the bank.

All I could think was the people who owned the accounts must have been extremely wealthy. Each account had between a hundred and two hundred grand.

“Are these clients?” I asked.

Marc shook his head. “Alex, look at the top of the page at the account holder information.” He held up his hands and shook them, seeing that I’d just skimmed through the paperwork.

I looked closer and saw the name Devon Langdon.

I jumped up out of my chair and tightened my grip on the file feeling my cool slip.

They were all his accounts!

“Holy shit!” I ran my hand through my hair and pressed my lips together. “That’s more like it.” Marc rolled his eyes.

“Marc this is twenty off-shore accounts.”

“And there’s more, I couldn’t get access and a few of my sources couldn’t either.” Marc could hack into anything, and for him to mention sources suggested that Devon had some serious firewalls set up to keep all this stuff hidden.

“Marc. Jesus, what the hell?”

“I found fifty personal accounts. I was only able to get around the firewalls because they were written in an old code I remembered back in college, and I couldn’t get into the account itself. That suggests he’s paying for extra protection to remain off grid. Alex no one can justify having that many accounts. It’s obvious that he’s doing something illegal. I suggest money laundering and embezzlement. You’ve seen the figures.”

I sank back down into my chair. “Fuck, this could all come out in court.”

“No, this is high tech shit the feds would have to pay a high level hacker buckets for. This stuff is completely off, off grid. However, if they suspect him enough for something they’ll do it. I know they will.”

I thought of what would happen if I took this to my father. He would most probably be so furious he’d fire me. He’d ask me what relevance this was to the case and be pissed at me for digging around.

I would never take on a client that had this many off shore accounts and I doubted that my dad knew about this.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Alex, this is enough for you to refuse to do the case. It’s enough for Sullivan’s as a company to refuse working with Devon and report his ass to the feds.”

“My father would kill me if I did that.”

“But I found it, he can’t blame you.” Marc narrowed his eyes.

“He won’t care. He’ll think I put you up to it. None of this is relevant to the case.”

“Well I’ll find something relevant.” He insisted.

“Marc, I’m not sure.” I couldn’t believe I just said that.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that because your mind is taken up with the damn senior partnership.”

“It is. Marc,” fuck, of course it was. I wouldn’t have been on this damn case if my career wasn’t involved. “I’m hoping that when we go to court we don’t get subpoenaed to provide company records.” I worked out that it had to be that, that Devon wanted to keep hidden. Although I was certain the man would have started to take measures to hide things.

It crossed my mind yesterday after the meeting.

“Jude would have to bring specific allegations for that to be requested, do you think he suspects anything shady happened?”

I nodded. “Yeah, he does.” I remembered what he said yesterday and I knew the man was no fool. Jude was a good attorney and looked at all angles of the box, the inside and out before he was happy.

“I’m thinking of the future here. Let’s say you win this case, and you probably will with the evidence you have so far. Those people who invested in those other companies could bring a class action against Devon. This is where he would definitely have to provide records and no one could hide everything. There’s always a trace of something. Always. We get caught up in that and we’re screwed. Just like that.”

This had gone several levels beyond me.

I never imagined that I’d stumble across anything that could put Sullivan’s at risk. That wasn’t in the cards.

But like Marc said, this was stuff that couldn’t get found out unless the feds were looking.

So what should I do?

Take the risk that it would all be okay for the moment, get the senior partnership and then remove all dealings of Sullivan’s with Devon and his company?

Could I do that?

What if it didn’t work that way? I had no idea what would happen when we went to court. Jude could be cooking up anything.

“How about this,” Marc began. “I have a friend who can try to look a little deeper. He could maybe find something that’s relevant to the case. Depending on what relevance is.”

“Relevant would be direct evidence to show some form of market manipulation.”

It would be very hard to find that and find a direct causal link. But that’s what it was looking like to me.

If I was going to be myself for a minute I’d jump to the conclusion that either some sort of inside dealing had taken place, where Devon had someone on the inside of these companies telling him when the shares were going to be highest in their worth. Or, and this was a big one which could have been more plausible –he was running some sort of pump and dump scheme.

With that, stock promoters bought stock in worthless, often risky, companies who were usually new and had no real backing but looked like great investment opportunities.

They’d promote the stocks to investors through calls and emails. Inflating the prices of these stocks then sell their shares for a profit. When the stocks plummeted it would be worthless.

Maybe it was all of it.

A bad feeling crept inside me as I thought about the possibility of that. Alarm bells were practically going off in my head.

“Alright, then I’ll go fishing and you can decide what you’ll do if I find anything.”

My shoulders slumped.

It was a hard task to ask a man to put his career on the line and make a decision that would throw him off track.

I’d never been in a state of flux before where I didn’t know what to do.

If Marc found something what would I do then?

I simply didn’t know.