AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We need to know if it’s a front, right?” Victor shrugged.
“I have Brad checking that out,” he said.
“But if we could get him to admit it, on the record, then that would help, wouldn’t it?” Victor considered that for a moment before nodding.
“You’d want to find out if he did it on purpose too, wouldn’t you?” Danielle nodded as well.
“Yeah, I am pretty sure I know the answer to that, but having it official...that should help, shouldn’t it?” Victor pressed his lips together.
“And what would you want to do with the recording?” Danielle took a slow, deep breath and exhaled in a sigh.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I know I want the recording.”
Chapter17
Danielle tried not to fidget as she waited for Sam to arrive at Metropolitan Bakery, near City Hall. He’d agreed to meet her there after she’d said she wanted to talk to him, and while Danielle was fairly certain it wasn’t the best place to have their conversation—there would be people there who could overhear—she also knew that if she tried to have the talk with him in private, whatever it was that she recorded would never be something she could use in court, if she had to.
The important thing is to get him to admit it in plain English, she thought. What would happen after that would be between her and Sam—though Victor had, in a sense, been involved in her plan.
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves and thought through what she and Victor had talked about. Brad hadn’t come back with an answer yet about whether the charities that s
he’d been fooled into contributing Victor’s money to had even been money laundering operations in the first place—that was the first thing she had to verify. And she was pretty sure that, one way or another, Sam would let that slip.
We might need to take a walk, for him to actually open up. That was something she and Victor had talked about, too. The recording device she had clipped to the inside of her jacket, hidden from anyone who might see it, would work just as well outside as in the cafe; but Danielle hoped that she could get the ordeal over with in the cafe, instead of going elsewhere.
The chair she was in wasn’t super comfortable, but Danielle looked around more out of a sense of wanting her conversation with her brother to be over and done with, rather than the normal fidgety discomfort. The metal was cold against the backs of her legs, and the table was a little wobbly, but Danielle thought it was one of the better places—still—to have the discussion and hopefully to get what she wanted.
She spotted Sam entering the cafe and lifted a hand to wave him over. She’d already gotten him a coffee and a slice of chocolate pound cake, and—just to keep things as normal looking as possible—had gotten herself a coffee as well, along with a slice of plum pie. She had held off on eating it before her brother arrived.
“Hey, sis,” Sam said, seeing her and crossing through the handful of people waiting in line; it was a slow part of the day—one of few—for the cafe.
“Hey,” Danielle said, smiling as naturally as she could. “Got you the chocolate pound cake.”
“You’re buttering me up for something, aren’t you?” But Sam sat down across from her nonetheless. Danielle had a fleeting moment of worry that the recorder might not be working—but there was no time to check it in that moment. Even if she got up and went into the bathroom, she might tip Sam off without meaning to.
“Just wanted to talk to you about a few things,” Danielle said. Sam broke off a piece of his pound cake and ate it, and Danielle followed suit with her pie.
“What’s up?”
Danielle savored the taste of the cooked plums and crisp, flaky crust and had a sip of her coffee.
“I just remembered that you had wanted—had insisted—on me presenting some financial opportunities to Victor, and then you just kind of dropped it,” she said.
“I figured you didn’t want me involved in your professional life,” Sam told her. Danielle struggled not to raise an eyebrow at that; she didn’t believe him. She couldn’t believe him.
“Well, I mentioned to him that you might have some legit opportunities and he did say that he is always interested in legit stuff,” Danielle explained. “So, if you had wanted to come to me with something I could pass along to him, I’d at least be willing to look at it.” She met his gaze and saw that Sam had—in his mind—already thrown up a kind of wall between them.
It was something she’d seen before in her brother’s gaze, back when they’d both been younger and he’d just been starting to get involved with the Bey family. When she’d asked him about what he was doing with that group, what his “work” was, he’d had that same look in his eyes.
“Why are you interested in showing him, all of a sudden?” Sam frowned slightly, but his suspicion wasn’t enough to keep him from continuing to eat his pound cake in little bites and snatches.
“Are you listening to me? I just told you. I’d mentioned it to Victor, and he said as long as it was legit, he was okay with hearing about it,” Danielle told her brother tartly.
“Yeah, but before it seemed like you didn’t want to hear one word about it,” Sam pointed out. “I’m just wondering why you’d even bring it up to him if you hadn’t changed your mind—and if you changed your mind, why that happened.”
“I’m dating the man,” Danielle countered. “He wondered why I was jumpy and stressed out, and I explained it to him.”
“So, you talked to him about me?” Sam looked disapproving.
