by Simply BWWM
“I’m sorry, there are no vacancies at this time.”
“Are you sure?” she challenged, but the line went dead in her ear.
“What the hell,” she muttered.
This wasn’t adding up. Neither were the sales at the gas station. They were in line with the success of Fontainebleau, but these two businesses should have been in the red or close to it. Something was wrong.
Nina looked up the specs on the hotel, coming up with a consistent eighty-five rooms total. That made sense, since there were three floors and each floor had about twenty-six rooms. Double-checking her math with her calculator, she came up with a max sales amount of just under forty-three thousand dollars a day. That was if they sold every room at the max price and were at capacity, which she was sure they weren’t.
But their sales for the day were nearly double that, and the number of rooms sold was listed at almost two hundred. According to the reported sales at Mirada, there were more rooms booked than existed on the property.
Her stomach dropped and her hand shook as she used the computer mouse to copy the file and save it to the desktop. Alex needed to see this, and he wasn’t going to be happy. But she had two more properties to check, and she didn’t want to make any conclusions until she saw the others.
She pulled the last two reports, her heart racing when she found much of the same. The first report was similar to Mirada and the gas station, but it was the final one that really caught her attention. Unlike the three that were doing so much more business than what Nina had seen with her own eyes, this property was pulling in almost nothing.
It was one of those entertainment centers people loved to drop their teens and tweens at, with a roller skating rink, batting cage, more arcade games than she’d ever seen in one place in her life, a four-lane bowling alley and laser tag. There were also two concession stands that served pizza, hotdogs, hamburgers and drinks.
Throughout the massive building, there were change-making machines to change dollars into quarters for the arcade games, but most of the kids had wristbands with barcodes that they could scan at each activity. A ticket was only good for two hours, and no one under the age of eighteen could exit without an adult checking them out.
The place had been packed, the cash office way in the back of the building. Nina had been overwhelmed by all the noise and kids running around, burning off their energy now that they were out of school. That place should have grossed at least five thousand just in entrance fees during each two-hour period, but it had barely cleared five thousand over the past seven hours. That wasn’t counting all the food, paid games, equipment rental and everything else. She had seen the platinum wristband, which was almost two hundred for unlimited food and play, on most of the kids there.
It had seemed like a lot, but when she thought about how much the kids were eating and playing, and the fact that included the entrance fee and meant that frazzled parents could get a break for two hours without worrying about their child leaving the venue, it really wasn’t that much. In the affluent location, with all the expensive cars in the parking lot during pick up and drop off, Nina knew that was a drop in the bucket to most of these parents, and the kids probably went several times a week.
This business should have been a cash cow, but it was a financial dud. There was no way the reports matched up with reality.
Now she knew something was wrong.
She looked through the reports she’d pulled that morning. Simply going through the motions to show the clerks how to work the new system, she hadn’t paid much attention to the particulars. Now, it seemed much more important. With each file she pulled up, she found more of the same. Mirada, the gas station off the 395, and the entertainment hall were showing similarly skewed numbers.
The other businesses were showing sales that made sense, and profits that were in line with their overhead. It was just the three properties that were filling Nina’s head with alarm bells. They accounted for fifty percent of her day. What if the numbers ran the same with the other businesses? Would half of the twenty-two come up skewed? How long had this been going on, and did Alex know he was being robbed?
Her phone chimed, making her jump.
“Not now,” she grumbled, snoozing the Spanish app reminder she’d set, thinking she would have plenty of time each night around this time.
She had bigger things to deal with.
She was putting her phone in her pocket when she stopped, remembering the conversation the two clerks had while she’d been waiting for the program to sync with all the different points of sale in the hotel.
They’d had the conversation entirely in Spanish even though they both spoke perfect English. At the time, she’d been so focused on what she was doing that she hadn’t minded. It kept her from getting sucked into the conversation while she was trying to focus. Now, she wondered if they’d said something they didn’t want her to understand.
Hands shaking, she opened the app, scrolling through the random recording the app had picked up at dinner and throughout her day. When she finally found the short recording from today right before lunch, she hit play and watched the video load, her heart racing.
“Is this really a good idea?”
“He knows what he’s doing. If the feds come after him, the numbers will prove that nothing is going on.”
“But what about the woman? What if she finds out?”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s a billionaire and she’s pregnant with his child. She’s not going to risk ruining that.”
“Did you take unit five offline?”
“Yes. We’ll use that for the rest and keep one through four clean.”
“Do you think that will be enough?”
Nina’s voice interrupted them then, and the recording stopped abruptly, but she’d heard enough. It was clear that Alex was aware of the discrepancies, and that it was intentional. He was using his businesses to launder money and probably had been for years.
She added up everything, including what she estimated the entertainment hall should have made during its business hours. The number she was left with was staggering, and she knew she’d only just scratched the surface. It seemed that her business savvy billionaire was making mounds of money the easy way. By cheating the system. If the IRS caught him, he was going down and taking her with him.
She couldn’t let that happen, even if she had to confront him about it and give him an ultimatum. He was already staggeringly wealthy, playing by the rules wouldn’t hurt him. If she could appeal to his protective instincts over herself and their baby, maybe she could convince him to fly clean from now on.
But she was going to need more ammo to convince him that she knew everything, and a few skewed reports from a small sampling of his properties wasn’t going to cut it. She needed more, and she knew where to find it.
Checking the time, she was glad to see that dinner was getting started. The guards would be distracted, timing their meals so that everyone had a chance to eat without the mansion being vulnerable. This was the perfect time to do a little sneaking around.
But what if Alex came home while she was snooping?
She decided to prevent that, texting him quickly and getting a response back almost immediately.
I miss you, she wrote.
I’ll be home around 8, he responded.
Good. She had almost two hours, and she didn’t need half that. Grabbing a flash drive out of her drawer, she left her room, heading to the forbidden office on the first floor. She was going to get to the bottom of this, and then she would confront him. How he ran his business before they met was his business. Now that she was in charge of his books and risking her freedom if he was ever caught, it was hers.
Chapter14
The office was dark, the door locked with a key. But Nina was prepared for that. After walking boldly into Alex’s room, which she was allowed to do anyway, she’d retrieved the key-ring she’d seen in his desk drawer when she’d surprised him with lunch in his suite on
e day while he was working. He’d managed to be nonchalant about shutting the drawer quickly, but not before she’d gotten a glimpse of most of what was in there. At the time, she’d thought he was protecting her from seeing the handgun that was mounted on the sidewall of the drawer, but now she wasn’t so sure.
There had been quite a few things in the drawer that could be sketchy now that she knew Alex was evading taxes. But she would worry about those things after she hit the downstairs office. She knew from her forensic accounting class that what she was looking for would be out of sight and not easily accessed, and the most logical place was the locked office.
She looked down the hall, thankful that the layout of the house provided her cover from the front doors and the main staircase. Someone would have to be coming down the hall to see her, and the dining room, which was at the end of the west hallway, was still filled with laughter and boisterous conversation that could be heard from the east hallway.
No one would be coming down this hall anytime soon, and the only access to the formal dining room was the west hallway, so staff coming and going wouldn’t be anywhere near where she was. And the rest of the staff would be patrolling the ground until they were relieved for their turn at dinner.
It took trying three keys before the lock finally turned, and she quickly slipped into the room, locking the door behind her just in case. She stood in the darkness for a moment, letting her eyes become accustomed to the low light. It was twilight outside, but this office had both heavy blinds and thick curtains that kept almost all the lights out.
Now that she knew that Alex was likely hiding some of his financial information, it made sense that the room would seem especially fortified. Even people who felt justified in skirting the law were paranoid about it.
When she could see well enough not to bump into anything, she made her way through the large room. The computer was on the desk, already on and running with the standard screen saver bouncing along the edges of the screen.
The heavy desk had several drawers, all of them locked with a key. She probably had the key on the keyring, but she didn’t really care about what was in the drawers right then. If she had time when she was done breaking into the computer, she would worry about the drawers.
She tapped the keyboard, and the password prompt appeared. She tried a few options that were similar to the passcodes from the properties, but nothing worked. She’d broken into the office for nothing, and now she had to figure out how to leave, still with nothing to show for her efforts. Angry, she glared at the computer, hitting enter one last time, even though she hadn’t typed anything yet.
A dialog box appeared, asking if she would like to retrieve the password by answering a security question. She almost clicked cancel, then decided to give it a try. The worst thing that would happen was she would find out that she knew nothing about Alex. Since discovering the tax evasion, she already knew that she didn’t know nearly enough, so it wouldn’t be a shock to find that she had no inkling of his most privileged information. Or the question could be something simple, like the make and model of Alex’s car, or the type of yacht he owned. Those were questions she could answer in her sleep.
“It couldn’t be that easy,” she mumbled, clicking OK and waiting for the question to appear.
She didn’t expect much, so when the question appeared, and it wasn’t completely foreign to her, she almost whooped with delight.
What color was the house on 23rd Street? the question read.
She stared at the screen, wracking her brain. She knew this, but her mind instantly drew a blank. Alex had told her this when he was talking about his childhood, and she had thought it was odd he’d even mentioned the color of his house.
But she’d brushed it off. People often remembered the most off-the-wall things from their childhood, so it made sense that his mind might hold onto such an inconsequential fact. She’d been in grade school when her grandmother passed away and had no recollection of the woman beyond the fact that she always wore purple shoes. The mind was a funny thing, but this childhood memory was one Alex had freely shared with her.
Maybe he wasn’t being as secretive with his life as she’d thought.
She ran through a few colors in her mind before it finally hit her.
“Peach!” she whispered excitedly, typing the answer, then taking a picture of the password with her phone’s camera when it appeared on the screen.
It was a series of random numbers and letters, and she never would have guessed the actual password in a million years. She used the right-click on the mouse to copy the password, then pasted it on the sign-on screen. Still afraid it wasn’t going to work, she held her breath as the computer finally loaded everything up.
She plugged the flash drive into the USB port, copying every folder on the desktop one at a time without looking at the contents. She would look at the files later, when she wasn’t pushing her luck by being in the office when she knew she wasn’t supposed to be.
When she’d copied all but the last folder, she heard someone in the hall and froze.
Keep walking, she urged silently, but the footsteps on the tile floors had already stopped, and she could see someone’s shadow pass in front of the light that seeped in through the gap in the door.
Shit! Nina thought, ejecting the flash drive as soon as the file was uploaded and shoving the thumb drive into the top of her shoe. She logged off the computer as the key slipped into the lock, looking for a place to hide, then deciding against it. She wasn’t going to get out of here if she was trapped behind a curtain like some ridiculous spy movie. She had one chance to pull it off, and she was going to own it.
She jumped onto the couch as the handle turned and threw her arm over her face, letting her body go limp like she was asleep.
The door opened and the light turned on, and Nina jumped as if she’d been startled out of a deep sleep, blinking at the doorway as if in confusion.
“What are you doing in here?” a familiar voice hissed from the doorway.
It was Jaime.
“I was coming down to dinner and I felt sick. I needed somewhere to lay down and I guess I dozed off.”
Had the screen saver popped up yet? Nina wondered frantically, glad the monitor was turned so its back was to the office door. Hopefully, it would engage before Jaime tired of talking to her, and he wouldn’t know she’d been on the computer at all.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” he grumbled.
“It was the first door I came to. I thought it was a bathroom. This house is really big and maybe you know it like the back of your hand, but I still get turned around in the garden. The inside of the house feels like a giant maze sometimes.”
She glared at him, daring him to call her a liar. He might be the boss’s number one, but Nina was carrying Alex’s child. Jaime didn’t compare to her place in Alex’s life and they both knew it. Would he stand his ground long enough, or would his suspicious nature take over and call her bluff?
“I’m not buying it,” Jaime said, bluntly. “You’re up to something.”
“You’re paranoid,” she shot back. “I’m pregnant, I got lightheaded and a little dizzy, and I laid down. Stop trying to make a rivalry between us a thing. Alex is still your friend, and this is not a competition. We’re not even on the same level.”
Jaime scoffed and she knew she’d hit the nail on the head. He was threatened by her presence, and that was making him paranoid. That had to be it.
“Look, Jamie,” she said, purposefully mispronouncing his name.
“It’s Jaime.”
“Whatever. Is dinner ready? Do you think you can walk me to the dining room so I don’t pass out before I eat? I think my sugar was low and I need to eat.”
“No,” he said flatly. “If you can find your way into places that you aren’t welcome, you can make it to the dining room. How did you get in here without a key?”
“The door was ajar. I guess you didn’t lock it properly. It was pretty da
rk in the room with the blinds and these heavy curtains, and I saw a couch. I didn’t even turn on the light to look around, and I guess I didn’t realize that the door knob was locked when I kicked it closed. Good thing I didn’t need help from someone who might actually help me. They would have had to kick down the door.”
Jaime came closer, and Nina fought the urge to panic. If she looked guilty now, he would be even more suspicious. She couldn’t risk that.
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” he said, his voice low and menacing. “But you better not ruin this for me. Stay out of this office and watch yourself. You’re playing with fire, and Alex isn’t going to tolerate your shit just because you’re carrying his baby. He’s thrown trash out of this house for less.”
Nina nearly shot up, itching to slap the smug look off his face and make him sorry he ever called her trash, but she knew he was trying to trick her. She scowled instead, sitting up slowly and putting her hands on either side of her like she needed extra support when really, she need something to grab to keep her from scratching his eyes out for what he’d said.
“It’s obvious that you have some personal baggage,” she said. “I have to get something to eat, and I’m not going to sit here and take your shit. You need to get right with yourself before you go judging others.”
“I don’t care what you think of me. Keep your nose out of our business and stay out of this room, am I clear?”
His tone chaffed, but she smiled instead of scowling, which she could tell instantly got under his skin.
“Crystal clear,” she said, standing and walking right by him as if she had no fear.
The truth was, she was trembling, and the rigid drive in her shoe pinched her with each step. She was careful, walking so she didn’t risk breaking the drive. Jaime followed her to the door, locking it behind her loudly.
As soon as she was in the stairwell, she pulled the drive out of her shoe, shoved it in her pocket and all but ran up the stairs. She had no way of knowing if the screen saver had come on while they were talking, and if Jaime came after her, she wanted a head start locking herself in her room.