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Nodding, Andi nervously licked her lips before blurting out, “They’re bankrupt,” making everything in him go still only to follow that up by rambling on about numbers for several minutes before ending with, “Please don’t fire me.”
“What is she talking about?” came the question as Devyn reached over and gently brushed his thumb over the scrape marking Andi’s chin only to stop when she winced.
“Everything’s fine. She’s mistaken,” Lucas said, sighing heavily as he gestured for security to show her to the door.
“No, it’s not,” Andi said with a stubborn shake of her head as she managed to stand up. “If you look at the last quarter, you can clearly see that the numbers don’t match the records that Hillshire Hotels sent over. They didn’t make two billion in profit last year. They’re in serious debt. The stock is worthless.”
“How much?” Devyn asked as the room suddenly went quiet.
“If my calculations are correct, I would say a little over twenty-two billion, forty-seven million, two hundred fifty-seven thousand dollars and eighty-three cents. Give or take a few cents,” Andi explained with a shrug that had him swallowing hard.
Keeping his eyes locked with hers, he said, “Run the numbers.”
“Devyn, there’s nothing wrong with the numbers. I ran them myself more than once,” Lucas explained as he picked the rumpled contract off the floor.
“I said run the numbers,” Devyn bit out, still watching Andi.
“I can show you,” Andi said, handing him the legal pad as she shifted her focus to the iPad in her arms as she quickly made her way to the table. “I was pressed for time with trying to get down here and everything, but I managed to scan last year’s financial reports for Hillshire Hotels. If you look at the screen, you’ll see the corresponding numbers to the reports that I have. The electronic files that were sent are showing Hillshire Hotels’ debts as profit,” she explained as she threw the images onto the large screen, splitting it so that the images on her iPad were side by side with the numbers from Lucas’s report.
She went through everything, highlighting all the debts that had been presented as profits, showing the corresponding dates before moving on to all the figures that had been altered or completely removed while she ran through large sums, never glancing down at the legal pad as she kept track of figures in her head while she worked through entire columns while Devyn stood there, absolutely floored by what he was seeing. When she was done, Andi said, “They’re in debt. I don’t know where the rest of the numbers came from,” she said, gesturing to the monitor, “but they don’t match the files that Hillshire Hotels sent this past week.”
“Oh, fuck…” Lucas said hollowly as he stared helplessly at the figures highlighted on the board.
“Please tell me that this is a joke,” Harold, the head of the board and Lucas’s godfather, said as they all stood there, staring helplessly at the screen as the reality of the situation slowly sank in.
Devyn watched as Hillshire Hotels’ CEO and lawyers shared a confused look as they quietly made their way to the door before his gaze shifted back to the woman that had a lot of explaining to do.
