Page 14

Two weeks.

Two weeks of absolute heaven.

It’s been two weeks since he asked me to be his girlfriend, which I thought was the most romantic thing ever. The way he got a little nervous and didn’t know how to word it properly—I haven’t stopped smiling.

We’re dating in secret, though, because we work together, and we both know it will cause a lot of drama in the office; we discussed it and decided it's going to make our lives a lot easier if we just keep it between ourselves.

And I don’t care if anyone knows or not, anyway—the bottom line is that I am happier than I have ever been in my entire life.

The last two weeks of my life have been by far the best.

Nico treats me like a queen. He makes me feel like I’m the most beautiful, special girl in the universe.

And the things he does to my body—things I didn’t know were a thing until he showed me.

I’d let that man do anything he wanted to me.

I trust him without limits, and he’s proven over and over again that he will take care of me and be gentle, even when we’re playing a little rough.

I grin, pressing my finger against the elevator on the ground floor.

It’s very early, and the office is still empty and quiet. I came in before everyone else, hoping to get a head start on everything.

I had planned to make dinner with Nico tonight, but as I was leaving the office yesterday, I realized that with the amount of work I have to get through, we’d both be working late instead.

So, I’m here before the world wakes up so that I can tackle all of it and we can still leave at a normal time and have the evening free.

The elevator slides open on the top floor, and I go straight into my office to put my things down. Nico doesn’t know I’m here. I giggle to myself. It’s a good thing. He would have come in early, too, and then we wouldn’t have managed to get any work done. He’s so distracting.

Gathering the files I want to complete, I find my thoughts lost on him again. Always lost on him.

I can’t believe how lucky I am.

He could have chosen any girl in the entire world. He could have snapped his fingers, and without question, whoever he was interested in would have fallen instantly in love with him.

He’s impossible not to love. And impossibly sexy.

And impossibly perfect.

I laugh again.

Gosh, I have to stop daydreaming about him and focus. Otherwise, coming in early is going to be a pointless mission.

The silver on my watch flashes as I tilt it towards me.

Five-thirty. Still dark outside.

I can get so much done if I lock down and focus.

It’s nearing the financial year's end, and the work I need to do is heavy and draining because it requires my full attention. But I love a good spreadsheet, so that makes it more fun.

I carry all of the folders I gathered into the boardroom next to our offices. Once they are spread out, I head back and grab the rest. I need the extra table space to organize things nicely.

I open my laptop, log on, and dive in.

An hour rolls by and I’m keeping a steady pace.

At seven, I see some movement outside the boardroom because other people are starting to arrive early, but not as early as I was.

At exactly forty-three minutes past seven, my heart stutters.

“What is that?” I whisper, pressing my finger against the document and squinting at the transaction. “That doesn’t make sense.”

I look at my laptop, scrolling down the spreadsheet.

“Okay, that’s definitely not right.”

Dragging the laptop right in front of me, I push the paperwork aside to run a more intensive search through the program.

The transaction I’ve stumbled across is small—insignificant, actually. I could easily ignore it, but it shouldn’t be there at all, and I don’t like that. I like things to line up perfectly at the end.

I type in one keyword and nothing comes up. I type in another keyword, and nothing comes up.

“What are you for?” I say out loud.

It’s not my job to check the entire month of transactions. I only deal with a portion of this document, usually. But now my curiosity has spiked, and I can’t let it go.

I need to know what this is about.

I bolt out of the boardroom into the filing cabinet down the hall, one that I never have reason to get into.

I grab the last two months of paperwork and hurry back to the desk. Both of these months have been signed off and completed.

I stand up, leaning over the paperwork in the now folders, my eyes tracing over the endless lists of transactions, searching for anything that looks the same as the one I found.

And sure enough, there it is. A couple of minuscule amounts.

Money moved around. Shifted and then transferred out of the account.

“Where to?” I mumble.

Sighing, my brows knitted, I sit back down at the laptop.

I need to know what to search for to see if there are any more of these little amounts.

I grab the folder and look at the full reference number for one of the transactions.

“Seven, three, dash, three—” I type into the search bar, and suddenly my screen is flooded with transactions.

All small.

All with the same reference code at the end.

All insignificant on their own, and easy to skip over, but together, the amount is growing quickly. The longer the program runs, the longer the list gets—and the higher the total gets with it.

I sit back in my chair with my jaw dropping while I’m watching the program tally up the transactions over the past few months.

It comes to a stop.

Disbelief and panic surge inside me.

This is one hundred percent not right.

This is…

Someone is up to something.

I click on the date range and run the same search for six months, and the exact same thing happens, but the amount gets bigger.

I can’t believe it.

Grabbing my phone, I dial Nico.

My heart is racing, and I stand up, pacing up and down the boardroom to try and ease my steadily building anxiety.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he says with a smile in his voice.

“Nico, when are you coming in? I need to show you something,” I blurt out.

“Are you okay? Did something happen?” he asks, immediately worried about me.

“I’m fine. I just need to show you something. I’m in boardroom one. I was working early. I was doing…“ I’m talking too fast and I’m rambling.

“Wait. I’m just getting into the elevator to come upstairs. I’ll be right there. Don’t move,” he says.

“Okay,” I say, letting out a breath of relief.

I stand anxiously, knotting my fingers in front of me while I wait for him. My eyes drift from the door to the laptop.

Millions .

Millions of dollars were squirreled away bit by bit over the past year. I don’t know when it started. I haven’t looked properly yet.

How far does this go back? It might have started this year—or worse, the year before. Nico and I can look through it together.

Nico bursts through the boardroom door in a hurry.

He walks straight to me and pulls me into his arms, brushing his hands over my waist, checking to see if I’m okay.

I shake my head. “I promise, I’m fine. This—look. It’s easier to show you.”

I take his hand and drag him to the table, pointing at the screen.

“Do you see these little transactions? Tiny. I have no idea what each one is for—but Nico, there are thousands of them.”

I scroll down the screen and point at the total.

“That’s the total for the last six months. I haven’t had a chance to look further back than this year. I don’t know when it started.”

I stand back and hold my breath as he pulls the laptop to face him and scrolls up and down. My heart is racing while I wait for him to process what is going on.

He needs a minute, just like I did, to realize just how bad this is.

I wait, getting tenser and tenser.

Finally, I can’t take it anymore, and I mutter his name. “Nico?”

“What the hell were you doing looking at these files? This has nothing to do with your work,” he snarls, turning towards me.

I gasp in shock, taking a step back. “I thought—“

“If it isn’t your job, you need to leave it alone. You had no right to go through company documents.”

“Nico, someone is stealing from you,” I shout, defensive and hurt by his reaction. Doesn’t he understand what I’ve uncovered?

“I can fucking see that,” he growls, turning his back on me.

So he can see. He does understand.

Why the hell is he so angry at me then?

“Nico,“ I say, stepping towards him with my hand reaching out to touch him, but I stop when he turns. The look in his eyes is dark and terrifying.

“Put these files away and close that search. This is not your job, and you should leave it alone. Focus on what you are paid to do,” he snaps, glaring at me.

His eyes are cold. He’s flooded with rage, and I don’t know why he’s angry with me ; I’m the one who found it, I’m the one who can help him look deeper into what’s happened and help him solve it, but instead, he’s telling me to back off.

“I can help you,” I say quietly, embarrassed and self-conscious of the way he’s looking at me as though I’ve betrayed him.

“I said, leave it alone ,” he snaps again. Then he turns on his heel and storms out of the boardroom, leaving me in shock and confusion.

My chest is so tight I can’t breathe.

That is a side of Nico I never wanted to see.

Tears spring to my eyes, and I fight hard to keep them away.

Crying at work is the last thing I need now.

I’m embarrassed enough as it is from how he reacted to me; I don’t need to add being caught crying in the boardroom like a child to the list.

I hurriedly brush my hand over my face and take a deep breath.

Fine.

None of it makes sense, but he asked me to leave it alone, so I will.

At least he knows. That’s what matters more than anything.

I’m sure he’ll do his own investigation either way.

I’m chewing the inside of my cheek while I put the files away, broken down and unmotivated. My heart is aching in my chest. Perhaps it’s better to leave dinner for another night.

I can’t imagine he’d want to come over tonight after this.

Once the boardroom is cleared and the files back where they belong, I pick up my laptop and carry it to my office, closing the door behind me because I want to work in privacy.

My emotions are all over the place, and I don’t feel like dealing with any of my co-workers.

I’ll finish the files that are my responsibility and leave the rest to whoever.

The day drags on.

I’m distracted and miserable.

Every time I hear someone walking past my office door, I hold my breath, hoping it's Nico coming to talk to me.

Every day, he’s in and out of my office.

But not today.

At lunch, I decide to escape the claustrophobia that’s growing heavier by the minute. Tugging my office door open, I glance left and right. He’s not around, so I bolt towards the elevator, in a hurry to leave without being spotted.

Nicole’s eyes are on me, though. “I’m heading out for a coffee,” I say, to avoid any curiously.

“We have coffee in the office,” she says blandly.

I ignore her. She is the last person I’m in the mood for now.

Downstairs, I walk briskly through the lobby and only really take a deep breath once I’m outside in the crisp, fresh air.

“What a horrible morning,” I mutter to myself as I turn in the direction of the coffee shop down the road.

Tugging my jacket tighter around my neck, I shove my hands into my pockets and keep my head down, still lost in thought about why he would have been so angry with me.

“I’ll wait it out,” I sigh.

He’ll talk to me sooner or later.

I hope.

The coffee shop is warm and welcoming, and a huge relief for my mind compared to the office.

I sit at a table by the window where I can watch the freshly falling, tiny little snowflakes drift quietly through the air and settle on the sidewalk and road. The tops of the tree branches are turning white with it.

It’s beautiful, and it calms me down.

“Hi sweetie, what can I get you?” the cheerful waitress asks.

“A hot chocolate, please. And do you have those chocolate croissants today?”

“Oh, you’re in luck. They just came out of the oven.”

She hurries away to grab me one before they all sell out. Those things disappear almost as soon as they’re put into the glass display case of the bakery section. I think people from all over the city come to this coffee shop instead of the ones closest to them, just for those croissants.

It’s a chocolate croissant, but it has salted caramel drizzled inside and little marshmallows melted into the pastry. Basically heaven for your mouth.

“Excuse me,” his voice makes me jump as he calls out to the waiter.

Nico waves his hand in the air, smiling at her. “I’ll have the same as what she’s having.”

The waitress gushes. She always gushes over Nico. I can’t blame her. He’s worthy of gushing over.

Her pink cheeks radiate as she grins at him. “I’ll make sure you get the biggest croissant,” she giggles.

I turn my face down to hide my laughter.

“Hi,” he says, sitting down in the chair opposite me. “What’s so funny?” he knows his brow.

“I didn’t get offered the biggest croissant. Why are you the favorite?”

“Pff.” He shrugs his jacket off, shaking his head. “She’s just being nice.”

“Mm. Nice . Yes. That’s what it is.” I grin, teasing him.

But then the smile fades from my face, and the anxiety returns to twist in my stomach. I sigh heavily.

Nico notices the change in me.