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My bedside clock is taunting me.
“We should get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.”
She strokes my chest, focusing more of her attention there than on my words. “Oh?”
I nod reluctantly. “Todd has a meeting with Scott, and he’d like me to be there.”
“Oh!” She sits up, suddenly interested. “Is thisit?”
“This is it,” I confirm.
“Oh... wow. Okay, so? What’s the plan? Tell me everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
COLE
Todd’s takedown has been a long time coming.
I’ve thought long and hard about how I want to go about it. Something quiet and tasteful could have sufficed, but I deserve a gotcha moment, preferably on camera. A slow pan of Todd’s face as he realizes that he’s royally fucked.
In lieu of a PowerPoint, I’ve opted for something tangible. A clear-front, bound presentation with a cover à la your sixth-grade book report. I made four copies. One is in the hands of Scott Durliat at this very moment.
Our CEO is the opposite of Todd in every way. Tall, trim, well dressed. He has salt-and-pepper hair, cut short and neat. There’s a severity to his features that makes it feel like he means business. When he first arrived, I watched the valet crew skitter to their places, the receptionists stand tall, shoulders back, smiles on. He brushed past everyone on his way to the conference room where we now sit.
I’m positioned across from him, hands folded on the table.
He flips through pages of my report, reading slowly, digesting what I’m trying to spoon-feed him.
Everything is there: copies of the expense reports going back three years, as well as all the account transfers. I had the head of our accounting department contact our bank. You see, when you write a check to someone, they have to endorse the check when they go to cash or deposit it. This signature goes onto the back of the check, in zone one. The institution that receives the check also has to mark the item before it’s processed back to the originating financial institution. That mark goes in zone two. The originating institution (i.e., our bank) received electronic images of the front and back of every processed check. Every single one of them was endorsed with Todd’s signature.
He really is stupid. Embezzling money from your company is reckless. Signing the fraudulent checks with your full legal name before you deposit them? Now that’s just ... bafflingly dumb.
I can see the rage setting in for Scott—$86,924’s worth of rage.
He’s like me, exacting and ill tempered. Though maybe I’ll be less ill tempered moving forward now that I’ll no longer have to deal with ToddandI’ll have Paige in my bed every night.Paige.
“He also verbally promised me a share of the windfall if I stayed quiet and worked alongside him on this,” I tack on. That part didn’t fit well within my organized presentation. Besides, I thought it was best delivered face to face anyway.
“That fucking bastard,” Scott hisses under his breath, refocusing my attention on the task at hand.
He slaps the report closed and tosses it onto the conference table. It slides across until I stop it with my hand.
For a moment, his sharp gaze locks on me, and the heat is still there. I’m the messenger about to be killed.
“Has the accounting team seen this yet?” he asks.
“I reviewed it with Joel but no one else. He helped me hunt through the expense reports so we could total up everything, and he also reached out to our bank concerning Todd’s checks. I wanted to be absolutelycertain. Joel was going to reach out to you first thing, but I told him I was already meeting with you today. Should we get him on the phone?”
He nods, and I stand to reach for the conference phone on the table. It’s a quick call.
Joel is as mad as Scott.
They go through the reports together while I sit quietly. Joel confirms my findings. The dominoes fall into place, and I have a hell of a time keeping the smile off my face.
A surge of power has me buzzing as the clock ticks down. Karmic retribution is just so ...satisfying.
Todd is due to join us any minute. He’ll be surprised to find Scott and I are already here. After all, the three of us weren’t due to meet until 11:00 a.m. Never mind that Scott and I have been here for over an hour.
