James
I was back in the office normal time the next day. Sometimes my nights and my days flowed together to become one big blur but generally, I managed to separate my business life from my social life well enough.
I wasn’t that I didn’t take my work seriously. Six days a week and it had to mean something to you. The company meant everything to me. Amanda and I had started it from scratch, together, and I’d put in everything I’d had into it. So much money had gone into the company and it was a huge success now with a turnover that made me sit up and gasp every now and then.
Things were going well.
The best part was that I had managed to break away from my dad’s business. Charlie was running the string of luxury hotels and resorts without me and I was happy with it that way. We had grown up with immense pressure to be exactly what we needed to be. I had no intention of moving forward in the same trend.
Charlie and I had always competed. Being partners with him would have worked out so much worse than with Amanda. He was hard as nails, just like our father had been, and he gloated whenever he was right. A man with as much business savvy, as much money, as little chance of fucking up, I would have been miserable for the rest of my life, as I had been for the first two decades of it.
No, I was happy where I was.
Amanda knocked on my door and opened before I got a chance to call her in. She held a page in her hand.
“This was faxed through this morning,” she said and handed it to me. I took it from her and looked at it. “It’s from Harry over at the hangars. They’re having an issue with the shipment to China. I’m going to have to go to Cali to sort it out.”
I looked up at her from the fax.
“You don’t want me to go?” I asked.
Amanda shook her head. “No, I’ve got this. Harry responds better to me, anyway.”
I couldn’t argue with that point. Amanda was a woman and she knew how to use her assets in this world. I could go there and fight with Harry but I’ve seen the way men responded to Amanda. She would be able to sort it out much quicker than I would.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I’ll make sure it all runs smoothly, here.”
“Please,” Amanda said. “Try to keep it sober, okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, mom.”
When last had my drinking and partying interfered with the business? I knew what I was doing, for God’s sake. This business was mainly my idea in the first place. I had called her in to help me start it up because she knew what she was doing in a world where men usually dominated. That didn’t mean I didn’t know what was going on in my company. For the most part, anyway.
She narrowed her eyes at me as if she was going to say something bitchy. Instead, she turned and left. I waited until she closed my door behind her before I shook my head and sighed. We worked well together as partners, I trusted her, but we didn’t always understand each other. We didn’t let it get in the way of business which was why it all worked so well despite being polar opposites.
I turned back to my work. I’d been going over the probabilities for the new venture we were looking at. Caleb had pointed out a few things for me to look at and I did it when he asked. He was good at his job and I would be a fool not to listen to him.
When I got back home the place was quiet and empty. I lived alone and it was usually like this, but tonight it bothered me. I didn’t like being alone all that much. I could go out and pick up a lady to bring home or spend my night in a club but I was going to be alone in the office for the next two days. I couldn’t afford to get wasted and struggle to get out of bed until just before noon.
Instead, I settled for Whiskey and a movie on the oversized television that I barely switched on. The movie was boring and the whiskey didn’t give me nearly as much of an escape as I’d wanted. I couldn’t win every day, could I?
I was barely in the office the next morning when Caleb rang me.
“I’m headed in your direction. Can I drop in? I need to discuss something with you.”
“Can’t it wait? I’m seeing you tonight as it is.”
Caleb cleared his throat. “It’s business, Jim. And it’s urgent. I’ll be there in five.”
He hung up without waiting for an answer. I had the morning free, I was only meeting with the bank later in the day.
Caleb was in my office less than fifteen minutes later. He sat opposite me. This man – the guy dressed in a suit with a serious expression – I had only gotten to know when we’d started working together. We’d grown up together, seeing each other when our fathers had things to discuss. We hadn’t been very close – we hadn’t told each other secrets or anything – but we were better friends than I’d ever been with anyone else.
“What’s so urgent?” I asked.
“I want you to look at a few things I got from Amanda,” he said, handing me a couple of pages stapled together. “I marked it with a highlighter.”
I took the pages from him and flipped through them, focusing on what he’d highlighted for me. At first, it was just the finances of the company and the different areas we branched into.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Keep reading,” he said.
I did as he asked. When I moved further and further back, I realized something was wrong. The finances didn’t add up. In fact, they didn’t make sense at all.
“What is this?” I asked again, alarmed this time. I looked at Caleb. His eyes were on me, steady, stormy, so dark they looked black. “Did Amanda give you this?”
He nodded. “I don’t think she meant to, though. When she handed it to me it was still sealed. I don’t think she looked at it before handing it over.”
“Did you ask for it?” I asked.
Caleb nodded. “The first part, yes. I think she’s up to something, Jimmy.”
I read over the facts again. This looked a hell of a lot like it had been changed. It was just a tiny part, but if this had been changed…
I shook my head. “Amanda wouldn’t do this,” I said. “Maybe Burgess has a hand in this?”
Caleb drummed his fingers on the armrests of his chair.
“I don’t need to tell you what I think,” he said.
I nodded. I knew what he thought of Amanda. She wouldn’t do this to me, though. We’d been working together for almost six years now and it had gone well. We fit together. We made it happen. This couldn’t be real.
I thought for a moment. Caleb kept quiet while I did, let me decide what to do.
“I can’t fire Burgess without her consent and she thinks the sun shines out of his ass. I don’t like the guy, personally, but we agreed to make all these choices together.”
Caleb nodded once.
“I’m going to prove to her that there’s something going on. God, if it’s bigger than this it’s fraud. It could sink us.”
“That why I needed you to look at it,” Caleb said. “What do you want to do?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, I think we need to put the brakes on with the expansion plans. Just for now. And I think we need to see what we can do to expose Burgess for this.”
Caleb shrugged. He didn’t think it was just the accountant we were using. He hated Amanda. I understood why – she was difficult to work with, cold and emotionless, but I was what made her so good at what she did. She thought like a man. It was the only reason I’d partnered with her. Because let’s face it, a woman in this world just wasn’t a good idea.
Amanda didn’t exactly classify as a woman in a business sense.
“I’m going to find a new accountant, someone that can look into this and deal with it discreetly.” There were many firms across town but I didn’t know any of them. If it turned out that there was more of this, if this was just the tip of the iceberg, and someone leaked about it, it could bring us down before we could do anything about it.
“I have someone that might be able to help with it,” Caleb said. “It’s an old friend of mine. She’s magic and you can trust her.”
“You’re sure? I don’t want this coming out at all.”
Caleb shook his head. “No, she’s safe. I’ll give her a call, ask her if she can come down.”
“Down?” I asked.
“She’s from Chicago.”
That meant that no one in Amanda’s circles would know her. It was a good idea. I nodded. “Okay. You do that. I’ll make sure she’s paid properly for it, too. For her discretion.”
“I’ll let her know,” Caleb said. He got up. “I have to get to the office. I came here first thing.”
“Thanks, Caleb,” I said. “What are we going to tell Amanda when this woman arrives?”
Caleb shrugged. “We can say she’s with me, working on the finances as we go along. That I’m training her or something. Amanda doesn’t like me so she won’t question me for too long. The less she must talk to me, the better. You know how fussy she is.”
“I don’t know if Amanda disliking you is a blessing or a curse,” I said.
“A blessing, trust me. She leaves me alone most of the time. I’ll call the accountant and keep you posted. The sooner we can get her here, the better. Until then, stall with the expansion.”
I shook Caleb’s hand and watched him leave my office.
I had an idea how I was going to get Amanda to wait before we carried on with our plans. She wasn’t the kind of woman that liked to mess around. It was one of the reasons we’d moved forward so quickly. When she decided on something, she did it. I had to think about things a few times before I committed to it. She was the one that usually pushed me into things and when I took the leap it worked out.
I had two days in my favor. Amanda wouldn’t be back until then and I wasn’t going to discuss a pause with her over the phone. I had a bit of time to figure it out.
I picked up the phone and dialed Burgess’s company. When I asked for him, the receptionist hesitated.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Unfortunately, Mr. Burgess is on leave for a few days.”
“Don’t you have an emergency number?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, we don’t, sir. I can take a message and have him phone you back as soon as he returns.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll see him at our next meeting.”
I hung up. How convenient that Burgess was out of town. Caleb had mentioned that he might have given him pages that were supposed to be classified. It was a simple mistake to make. Amanda hadn’t read the papers. She couldn’t be involved in this. I trusted her with my money. At first, when we’d just started out together and we were still feeling each other out, we’d discussed everything, going over the numbers together every week. After a while, she’d taken over when I’d missed a few beats and nothing had gone wrong. Slowly we had fallen into a pattern, a routine.
I’d started trusting her. She’d wanted to take the responsibility and we’d fallen into a habit, a rhythm, that worked for us both.
Never had I thought she would be cheating the system. Amanda was too forward for that, too serious, too strict. It had to be Derek Burgess. Once I proved it was him, I would take it straight to her. If we both agreed we could get rid of him right away, and if it this accountant Caleb suggested was any good, she could fix whatever was wrong to save our asses before anyone important found out what was going on.
That could work. Hopefully, Caleb’s accountant was available. It had suddenly become very important.