Chapter10
Nina sat back in her office chair, letting out a huge sigh. It had taken her all week, but she’d finally managed to get all the accounts organized and current, giving her a place to start now that she was keeping Alex’s books. She looked at the number at the bottom of the overview page, which showed a staggeringly high number. All-combined, Alex’s properties had brought in nearly a billion dollars just in the last quarter.
She had been expecting a number closer to half that, but after running the numbers three times, she came up with the same number. Even the gas station that they’d visited was doing surprisingly well. Despite what unorganized money handling and properties that varied wildly in size and overhead, every business appeared to be doing extremely well. Even the restaurants, which were notoriously risky business ventures, were pulling massive profits.
It was like Alex had the golden touch.
Her phone chimed at her and she rolled her eyes. The app she had downloaded had been prompting her to spend a couple minutes learning new words each day. She’d been putting it off, so busy with work that she just hadn’t had the time. She had no time after work either, since Alex knocked on her door most days at five, making it a point to have dinner with her and the rest of the crew in the formal dining room. By the time she had a moment to herself, she was usually ready for bed.
She started to click the snooze on the notification when she stopped herself. I’ve got to learn Spanish, she thought, forcing herself to open the app for the first time since she’d downloaded it. It was clear from phone conversations that Alex had pretty much daily that many of the people he worked with spoke Spanish.
She wasn’t sure if they spoke English as well, but a common language went a long way towards establishing rapport. It would only help her, and once she got proficient enough, she could practice with Alex.
Excited again, she opened the app, perusing the menu and clicking Lesson One. She went through the lesson several times, repeating after the prompt and doing her best to imitate the audio example. By the time she felt confident that she had the first lesson mastered, it was almost four o’clock.
She laughed when the screen filled with colorful fireworks, congratulating her for completing the first lesson. It was silly, but it made her feel like she accomplished something. She made it a point to do at least one lesson a day until she completed them all. It would take her months, but it was worth it.
A dialog box appeared on the screen.
Would you like to translate your recordings? the prompt asked.
“It recorded me?” She laughed, shaking her head.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. Would she sound ridiculous? She clicked yes too curious to let it go. Maybe she would be pleasantly surprised, or maybe she would have all the motivation she needed to keep at it.
When the menu popped up, she realized that she had several recordings, each with a date and time stamp from the past week.
“That’s odd,” she said, clicking on the oldest recording and immediately recognizing Alex’s voice.
At first, she was spooked, then she realized that she had given the app permission to record. Like other apps, even when it wasn’t in use, it was always on in the background. While social media apps used keywords in overheard conversations to target ads to the owner of the phone, this app apparently started recording the instant it recognized someone speaking Spanish.
“So, that’s what I paid all that money for,” she said, listening to Alex’s smooth voice as he spoke to the person on the other line.
The recording ended, and another dialog box appeared.
Would you like to translate?
She hesitated, then clicked yes. If it was private, he wouldn’t talk about it in front of her, right? He had no way of knowing if she understood the first time he’d done it, so it was probably just business.
Another screen popped up and the recording started playing while English subtitles scrolled across the empty black screen.
“This is so cool,” she said, reading along while listening to his voice and the way he was pronouncing the words.
She recognized a few words from the first lesson, but the rest of the conversation was a blur and made no sense without the other person’s side of the conversation. It was a cool feature, but she needed to use it when there were more people involved.
She was about to hit the x to close the screen when one line caught her eye. Using her finger to rewind the video, she read the previous sentence, then the sentence that had piqued her interest again.
Just give her the cooked books when she comes. No, she doesn’t know, but I need a viable financial file for each property just in case.
She paused the recording and rewound it again and again, reading it with a sinking heart. He had to be talking about her, right? There was no one else that he could be talking about. She moved the slide on the video back a few more sentences, but none of that made any sense at all, and it was clear that they’d been talking about something else when the person on the other line had blurted out their question about Nina.
She pushed play again, letting the video finish out, but there was nothing else that caught her eye.
She looked over her shoulder, suddenly paranoid as she pulled out her earbuds and closed the office door behind her. She pressed the thumb lock down and sat back in her chair. With one earbud in so she could hear if someone knocked, she scrolled through the files until she found a more recent one. This file was dated two days, and the time stamp showed it was pretty late at night.
She thought back and realized that she had spent the night in Alex’s bed after a wild night of sex, and she was sound asleep during this call. Not sure what she was going to find, she clicked the button to translate and another blank screen popped up and the words began to scroll across the screen.
She sat there, open-mouthed, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. This conversation was clearly about her, but nothing else really made sense. It started with, “No, she’s sleeping,” which meant he absolutely had been talking about her.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when the door handle turned part way, then stopped. She pushed the button on the side of the phone to lock the screen and hurried to open the door.
“Was the door locked?” she asked when she opened the door to Alex’s smiling face.
“I was about to ask you the same question. Did you press the button down by mistake?”
She made a show of looking at the knob, then smiling as if embarrassed.
“I didn’t even notice it was there. I probably did. Force of habit after living in the dorms for so long.”
“I bet,” he said, hugging and kissing her as he always had when he came up after his workday. “What’s wrong? You seem distracted.”
“I am,” she said. “I’ve been working all day and guess I’m still thinking in numbers.”
“We talked about that. I hope you’re planning on scaling back your hours when you’re done setting up the system.”
“I will.”
“How much longer do you think it will take?”
“At least another week,” she lied.
“I’m in no hurry. I’m surprised you’ve gotten to the halfway point. This baby is going to be a genius if he’s even half as smart as his mom.”
“He?” she teased, jumping on the opportunity to steer the conversation away from work. “How do you know that it’s not a girl?”
“Wishful thinking,” he said, kissing her again.
This time, she leaned into the kiss, even though she wasn’t feeling it. Alex was lying about something, and she needed to get to the bottom of it before this went any further. But Alex needed to think that nothing had changed so he would keep doing what he was doing. She needed answers, and she knew that Alex was smart enough to be more cautious if she acted like she suspected he was up to something.
“Dinner is a little early tonight,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.”
“What is it?” she said, putting her phone and earbuds in her pocket.
“If I tell you, then it’s not a surprise. Don’t worry, you’re going to love it.”
He put his elbow out and she took it, letting him lead her down the hall and to the dining room. When they were almost to the dining room she stopped, smiling apologetically.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she lied.
“I’ll save you a seat,” he said.
He kissed her on the cheek and left her standing in the hall outside the bathroom. She hurried into the room, locking the door and unlocking the screen on her phone. She scrolled through the menu on her app, starting the recording and making sure that it worked when the screen was locked. It did. She put her earbuds in the other pocket and got her phone situated with the microphone facing up, then flushed the toilet and turned the faucet on and ran her hands under the water.
She washed with the fragrant soap that was selected specifically to enhance the décor of this room. Everything in the bathroom was a deep red, so naturally, the soap smelled of warm apple pie. The house staff took as much care with every room in the house, and Nina had to wonder at the amount of wealth it would take to make her care whether a room that was mostly warm browns and off-whites should smell like vanilla or cinnamon.
She opened the door to the bathroom and stopped herself in time to avoid a collision with Jaime. She scowled at him, but he didn’t acknowledge that he had nearly run her over. He just kept walking. She bet he was in on it, too. Whatever it was.
She had a lot of thinking to do when she found a moment to herself after dinner and whatever surprise Alex had in store. First, she needed to know what he was hiding from her, and then she had to decide what, if anything, she was going to do about it. Would it be worth it to get involved if it was something small?
What if the thing he was hiding was his net-worth? Did he want to make sure she was in it for love and not money? Was he drafting a prenup? Or maybe he was doing something else entirely, and once he exposed the truth, she would find out that the truth was nowhere near as bad as she’d thought it would be.
She followed Jaime into the dining room, heading straight for the empty seat next to Alex. Their meal was already being served and the table was filled with familiar faces. Nina watched the people around her as some ate quickly and left, relieving the guards still on duty that were waiting for their turn. The staff worked like a well-oiled machine, and it seemed like everyone knew exactly what they were supposed to do without fail.
Now that she was feeling suspicious, she noticed that they behaved with military-like efficiency, and she found herself wondering why Alex needed all these guards. Sure, it was obvious that he was wealthy, and moving money from his properties could be dangerous, but he had a full staff of men that appeared to serve no other purpose than to watch the house. Sure, some of them had job titles that suggested they were just your basic house staff of the super-rich, but even the gardener and the car mechanic looked like they could take down an elephant with their bare hands.
“When are you leaving?” she heard Jaime ask Alex from the seat on the other side of him.
She remained focused on the people around her, but her ears were trained on their conversation.
“We’ll leave in an hour.”
“I should go with you.”
“I’ve got this.”
“You put yourself at risk traveling alone.”
“I’m not worried about it. It’s only a couple of hours.”
“You won’t even know I’m there.”
Alex laughed, and she could see Jaime’s hand tense.
“Of course, I will. It’s fine, Jaime. We have everything we need and the weather is perfect.”
“Suit yourself,” Jaime said, his frustration palpable as he calmly got up from the table and started to leave.
“Where are you going?”
“To make sure everything is ship shape so I don’t spend the night worrying about you.”
“Jaime, you are too good to me. Everything will be fine.”
“For my peace of mind—”
“Fine. Check everything and make sure we’re good to go. It can’t hurt to have a second set of eyes.”
Jaime nodded curtly and walked away, his foul mood leaving the room with him.
“What was that about, Alex?”
“He worries about us.”
“Not us, you. He doesn’t like me.”
“That’s just how he is. You have to look past his gruff exterior to see the heart of gold he’s trying to protect.”
“If you say so.”
“I’ve known him for five years. He’s a good guy. I trust him with my life and yours, too.”
“Does he know where we’re going?”
“No, which is why he’s wound up about it. I want it to be a surprise. It’s been too long since I’ve spoiled you.”
“I’ve been here less than a month and you’ve bought me a car, new wardrobe, and furnished a private apartment in your home for me. I think you’ve spoiled me plenty.”
Her stomach clenched, and her own words made her feel guilty. She was trying to catch him in a lie when he’d given her no reason not to trust him. It wasn’t about them personally, just his business. Could she really expect him to know her for such a short time and just tell her everything?
She felt bad now, the phone in her pocket heavy with her guilt. Maybe she’d misinterpreted what was going on, or maybe the translating app wasn’t that good. There was something lost when translating from any language to another; that was common knowledge.
She couldn’t be sure that the translation was one hundred percent accurate until she had more information, and even if it was, everything she’d read had been out of context. What if Alex overheard a conversation between herself and Jazzy; would he be suspicious or come to conclusions that were wrong?
She didn’t know the answer, but she knew it was possible. She still felt like something was going on, but she didn’t know what. Until she had more proof, she wasn’t going to let it ruin a perfectly good surprise.