The last couple weeks had been a blur. The idea that I had worked with Maximus for an entire month almost didn’t seem plausible. I enjoyed the work I did. So much so that it didn’t seem like work at all. I’d sit down at my desk and start knocking out tasks, and before I knew it the clock flashed five in the afternoon and it was time to go. But during the empty moments that sometimes filled my days, his words echoed through my mind.

A body that could start wars between ruling nations.

I hadn’t imagined that, had I?

I didn’t like thinking about that night. It had been a long time since I’d allowed someone’s comments about my appearance to have the effect they did. And having that moment in front of my boss was stressful enough without having to layer on his mysterious nature. Did he make that comment because he thought I was pretty? Or had he been trying to cheer me up since I was on the verge of exploding with silent anger in the back of his car that night?

Either way, he was beginning to do things that were very unlike his brooding nature.

Maximus started doing things like bringing me coffee in the morning. Leaving a cookie on my desk after lunch. Asking me how my day was going occasionally. Letting me go home early with pay if he felt I’d done enough. But it was his talkative nature that threw me for a loop. Before, our office interactions were limited to me peeking over at him and his eyes dancing along my desk.

At least, I thought he was looking at my desk.

Now, our interactions were a little more personal. He would stand at the edge of my desk and talk with me for a few minutes. He’d ask me how my weekend went, or what I got up to with Scarlet, or ask me what book I was reading.

The attention was nice. And wouldn’t have been a problem had I not been coming across things in his files that made me nervous.

Some days were fine. Normal. With nothing out of the ordinary to speak of. But other days, I came across things that didn’t make sense. Things that didn’t line up. Things that didn’t make sense for a financial corporation.

The first thing that tipped me off was when statues were being ordered to a few of the warehouses in New York. I wasn’t sure what those were for, and I tried to pass it off as lobby decoration for a couple of the offices. But that didn’t make sense either. Especially when they popped up as ‘delivered’, but no statues appeared in the office. I figured at least some of them would show up at the headquarters for the company. Especially with the number of statues that had been commissioned. Regular shipment orders—as many as ten of them a week—would come through. Maximus could open a damn museum with the number of statues his company had ordered. But his office was empty of art, and no statues were delivered onsite.

Another spreadsheet of shipments also listed pearls and gravel. Random shipments of jewelry and rock, which made even less sense given how expensive the gravel was on the expense sheet. I figured it was an error I needed to resolve with one of his departments, so I looked up the average prices of pearls and gravel. I wanted to take the current cost on the market and compare it to the costs that were on the spreadsheet. I had no idea what a financial institution would need with pearls and gravel, but the prices were the first place to start my investigation into what the hell was going on. Someone had to have been using a bad formula somewhere in the program. The discrepancy alone was costing Maximus’ company tens of thousands of dollars.

The current costs on the market didn’t come close to matching what Abbott Financial was paying out.

Something didn’t sit right with my gut, but part of me wasn’t comfortable bringing it up with my boss, either. I didn’t understand the conflicting emotions, but as a single woman living in New York City, I’d learned a long time ago to trust my gut. And the deeper I dug trying to prove nothing was wrong, the worse things seemed.

One afternoon while Maximus was out of the office, I tried to find any clients I could trace these purchases through. Anyone who could provide some insight into what the hell was going on. I went back and focused on the clients the spreadsheets belonged to, but it got me nowhere. In the slot where the client’s name was supposed to be housed, there was nothing but random jumbles of numbers. Each one different, and each one different lengths.

None of it made sense.

In fact, when I attempted to look up any client’s names, all of them were simply those strings of numbers. I copied and pasted them into the employee database, thinking maybe they were I.D. numbers for cards. But nothing came up.

Not a damn thing.

So, I abandoned the name search and went back to what was clear. The items on the purchase orders and the spreadsheets. The purchase orders and the spreadsheets had the same numbers, so it was obviously how the clients were identified. But the fact that those clients didn’t have names made me very nervous. Some of those numbers even had multiple spreadsheets, so I knew those strings of numbers were attached to one specific person. And with each number string I typed in, a new spreadsheet popped up. More statues. More pearls. More gravel. Pounds and pounds of plain sugar. One spreadsheet even had a recurring order each month for twelve pounds of herbs.

I froze in my seat as my eyes read that one line repeatedly.

Herbs.

I pulled up a tab on my computer screen and began to type in everything else I had found. Sugar. Gravel. Pearls. White doves. But the second the screens began to load I looked around and reminded myself where I was. I quickly shut down my computer, rebooting it on the spot. It was a company computer. Every move I made on the thing had the possibility of being tracked.

I ran my hands through my hair as I scooted my chair away from my desk.

There was no way Maximus was doing this, right?

I called back to memory the NDA he had me sign upon hiring me and it all made a little more sense. And I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what ‘herbs’ were. I grew up in a small town that didn’t even have a movie theater to keep the people inside it entertained. While I was unfamiliar with the other phrases and slogans tossed around in those spreadsheets, ‘herbs’ was a term I’d heard several times growing up. But suddenly, the calculations made sense. Why ten pounds of gravel was seven times what the market cost was for actual gravel. Why four strings of pearls were easily twelve times the market cost of a single string of ocean-bred pearls.

Would I be liable for any of this if he was caught? Did this man expect me to go to prison for him? Was this why his last secretary had left?

I was alone in his office and I felt panic bubbling through my veins. My hands came down over my face as my breathing began to speed up. I couldn’t panic. Maximus was due back in the office any second. I had to keep calm. I had to get back to work. I had to act like I hadn’t just uncovered what could have been the single greatest underground scandal in the entire nation.

If I stopped showing up to work, would he retaliate? Was Maximus a violent man?

I didn’t know anything anymore.

I tried to calm myself down. I reminded myself that he had always been kind to me. Thoughtful to me. He called me pretty because I was on the verge of maddening anger in his car. He gave me a job when I needed it the most without any experience in the field. The Maximus I experienced daily was a thoughtful and caring human being. I owed it to him to let him explain himself.

There was always a chance it wasn’t him. I knew Sebastian had access to the company. And I could see this kind of thing coming from him. He had the grin of a Cheshire Cat and the smile of a snake. He was confident. Boastful. Charming, in an unnerving way. He would fit the profile more than a brooding brother who sat at his desk all day hunched over paperwork.

Either way, I had to come at this from a professional standpoint. I had to stick to my guns and to the morals that had gotten me this far in life. And when I boiled everything down, there was nothing but a potential lie. It didn’t matter what the lie was, but it was a lie. A smokescreen. Something false going on in a company I worked for, and something deep inside knew Maximus was abreast of the reality. And I didn’t like being lied to. A man didn’t have to be good, but he did have to be honest.

Maximus didn’t always have to be good, but he sure as hell needed to be honest.

If he fired me for confronting him, fine. I’d move past it and find myself another position. But I wasn’t going to go into that conversation blindly. I deserved to know what was happening if I had gotten myself tangled up in something that could potentially ruin my world. I deserved to know what I was looking at if I was going to be processing those spreadsheets every month. After all, the police didn’t make exceptions for ignorance.

I was either an accomplice, or I wasn’t.

I came into work the next morning ready to confront him. I dressed a little nicer, wearing a formfitting button-front shirt and a skirt I picked up at the store. Dressing strong meant I felt strong, and I would need that well of strength to walk into this conversation. I drew in deep breaths as the elevator ascended me to the top floor, then I stepped off and headed to our office.

But his voice behind the door froze me in my spot.

“You know what happens to employees who lose product,” Maximus said.

He was practically growling into the phone.

“You need to either find it or replace it by the end of the week. And don’t you dare force my hand. You know what happens when people tempt fate with me.”

His voice was thunderous. Much deeper and thicker when he was angry. I stood there, digesting his words as the truth of his company cemented itself into my mind. No one talked that way to a financial client. No one was addressed with those phrases or that tone of voice when someone wanted to balance their damn financial portfolio. And frustration in Maximus’ voice was unmistakable, which stirred within me emotions I couldn’t reconcile. Part of me wanted to go smooth the frustration from his brow with my fingertips and the other part of me wanted to slap him across the face with what I knew.

But no part of me wanted to be angry with him. Which was odd.

“Good morning, Mr. Abbott,” I said as I walked into the office.

I made my way to my desk and sat down, pretending I hadn’t heard the conversation.

“That a new outfit?” he asked.

“It is.”

“Looks nice on you.”

My eyes flickered over to him before darting back to my computer screen.

“There’s a formal company event coming up,” he said.

“Sounds like fun.”

“Scarlet will be there with Sebastian, I’m sure,” he said.

I felt a nervous heat rise up the back of my neck.

“I’m sure she’ll have fun,” I said.

“It’s this Saturday. Eight o’clock.”

“I’ll see if I can make it.”

“Would you like me to pick you up again?”

I panned my gaze over to him and found his eyes hooked onto the profile of my face. I tried to act like my mind wasn’t swirling a million times a second. But it did present an interesting opportunity. If I went with him, I would have plenty of chances to address my concerns, and in a company forum as well. That would minimize his outburst, if there was one. And if Scarlet was going, there was a chance I could stick with her if the outburst became something that made me uncomfortable.

“No need to pick me up, but a company event sounds nice,” I said.

“Are you sure? I could pick you up around six. Sebastian and Scarlet might enjoy going and getting dinner beforehand.”

That was the last thing I wanted. To have a fun little encore dinner before being trapped in a car with him.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ve got plans up until seven, so I won’t have much time to get ready before something like that anyway. Where’s the event being held?”

“The Marriott Marquis,” he said. “In their Broadway Ballroom.”

“Then I look forward to seeing you there Saturday evening.”

I glanced over at him and saw his brow furrowed deeply. I nodded at him and tried to give him a kind smile, but I felt my legs locking up with anxiety. I tried to shake away the part of me that really did want to be around him. That wanted to be pressed against him. That wanted to feel his body heat beating against my skin. But this was serious, and the sooner I could address things with him the better off I would be. Which meant I couldn’t get distracted by my want for none of this to be true.

He went back to his computer without another word and my chest ached. I tried to ignore it, but it was difficult to set aside my fresh emotions. With all the theories mulling around in my head and with so many explanations that could wipe it all away, there was no doubt in my mind that I was in trouble. I was taken with Maximus Abbot.

And I prayed the information I found the other day and the pieces I had put together were wrong.