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The smells and sounds were the same. The clicking keyboards, the ringing phones, the scent of the carpet cleaner the weekend crew used. Even Wyatt’s desk was exactly as he’d left it, everything in its place. His assistant had placed a stack of messages on top of his desk calendar, arranged first by urgency then by date they were received. Everything the way he liked it. Routine. Predictable. Safe. These four walls had been sanctuary for more years than not. Yet, as Wyatt sat in his desk chair, staring out the row of windows, he simply felt lost.
The day outside was bright despite the chill, but the tint on the building’s windows gave everything on the other side a gray hue, reflecting Wyatt’s mood back at him. He’d spent yesterday digging through files and combing through reports, not exactly sure he wanted to see what was there, but finding what had been hiding in them anyway. A goddamned nightmare tucked in a seemingly innocuous row of numbers.
And now nothing would ever be the same.
Cary, his assistant, breezed into his office, the smell of coffee alerting Wyatt of his presence. Cary cleared his throat in that practiced way he had to let Wyatt know he was no longer alone. “Mr. Austin, so good to have you back. I brought you coffee from a new place today. Hope you don’t mind. The other was out of the kind you like.”
“Thanks. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Wyatt spun in his chair to face Cary.
Cary looked down at the steno pad in his hand. “So you have Mrs. Caracas coming in at ten. She wants to shift some investments around. Then I have Mr. Bristol in after lunch—he’s ranting about the big loss he took last week.” He rolled his eyes. “As if you didn’t warn him that it was a shit move. And—”
Wyatt held up his hand. “Just send the schedule to my email. And cancel anything I have for the rest of the week.”
Cary’s eyes widened to panicked-deer mode. “What? But you have—”
“I don’t care,” Wyatt said, cutting him off, but not having the energy to explain further. “I’m going meet with my father in a few minutes. We aren’t to be interrupted.”
Cary clamped his jaw and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Wyatt grabbed a folder off his desk and walked over to Cary, putting a hand on his shoulder when he reached him. “Thank you for keeping the ship afloat while I was gone. I know your position isn’t an easy one and that I can be a prick to deal with sometimes. You’ve done a great job.”
Cary looked stunned, as if Wyatt had spoken it in a foreign language, but he quickly found his composure. “Thank you, sir.”
Wyatt left him behind and headed toward his father’s office. It was a walk he’d made thousands of times. But never before had he carried the dread he did today. He still had a sliver of hope he was wrong, but his gut never lied. And his gut was screaming foul.
He strode past his father’s assistant, giving her a curt response when she attempted to thwart him from walking in unannounced, and opened his father’s office door. His dad was on the phone when Wyatt walked in but he waved him in anyway. Wyatt shut the door behind him and took a seat in the palatial space that the rest of the staff secretly referred to as the Oval Office.
His father wrapped up his conversation after a few minutes, then hung up the phone, sending Wyatt a smile. “Welcome back, son.”
“Thanks.”
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “Looks like you got some sun.”
Flashes of running through the waves with Kelsey flickered through Wyatt’s mind, a painful reminder of what he no longer had now that he was back in this gray fog of a building. “Well, it was a beach vacation.”
His father chuckled. “I’m impressed you spent that much time outside. I heard you got more than a suntan, though. Saw the email about Belle Pritchard. And I just got off the phone with Andrew Carmichael a few minutes ago. Seems you made quite an impression on him.”
Wyatt’s gaze narrowed. “What the hell is he doing calling you?”
“He’s ready to work with us. Said he needs a risk-taker and you proved yourself to be one last week.” A beaming smile broke through. “I have to tell you, son. I wasn’t sure you could pull it off. But color me impressed. You’re not as socially inept as I thought. Maybe I’ve raised a true CEO after all.”Author: Roni Loren
“I’m not accepting his business,” Wyatt said flatly.
His father sat up straighter, deep lines digging into his forehead. “You sure as hell will. I’ve already confirmed with him.”
Wyatt took the manila folder from his lap and tossed it onto his father’s desk. “Tell me you’re not laundering money for your clients.”
His dad blinked, once, twice.
Wyatt leaned forward and opened the folder, pointing hard at the report on top, the red circles he’d made around certain transactions. His tone was lethal when he spoke again. “Fucking tell me that you are not putting this company, its employees, your family, and me at risk for goddamned prison.”
“Where’d you get these?”
Wyatt made a disgusted sound. “What the hell does that matter? You thought you could hide it forever? Get your minions to doctor reports before they got to me without me noticing the inconsistencies?”
His dad’s jaw twitched.
“Tell me it isn’t true, Dad. Look me in the fucking face and tell me.”
