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I push back the fabric and pile onto the bed, shoving the blankets low. It's comfortable. Light filters in through the gauze, making the room seem surreal. I can pretend I'm in a dream. Maybe I'm in a foreign country with bad mosquitoes, and no one is with me. I'm alone in this country, all by myself.Heaven. I can sleep when I want, eat when I want, exercise when I decide to.
The fantasy doesn’t stick with me. No way I can stay here with this old man, and I can’t go home. How in the hell am I going to get out of their clutches if I’m never given any freedom?
ChapterFour
Niallan (Neo)
My father has just dropped the biggest bomb on me, and I can’t even comprehend what in the hell he is even talking about.
The stiffness of my neck makes me jerk my head instead of shaking it. Anger flows through me like water rushing down a river. “I can’t marry her.”
“Sure you can. That’s what all of this is for. You marry that girl, and we get his business.”
“Dad, didn’t you—” my phone rings, interrupting me. It’s the office. I think about letting it drop to voicemail, but I need to know how everything is going. “Neo Foster here.”
“We’ve got trouble.”
It’s Matthew. He’s the guy in charge of our normal clients. We run a clean operation for most of our clients. The business operates just like any other investment house. No one who isn’t a part of the society would even know we launder large sums of money. The business deal Dad made with Eric Gale will tip us over the edge. Right now, we can’t handle that huge of a scheme. The shell companies I have set up don’t attract attention, but Gale’s business is huge. He’ll attract a lot of attention. I’ll need to do about six months of work behind the scenes to get this under control, but Gale will expect business to run as usual right now.
We’re screwed. There is no way this will go over smoothly.
The office isn’t far from our house, and I make it there in record time. Before I even sit, Matthew enters then lifts his eyebrows. His frown deepens. “Everything okay?”
How much should I tell him? We keep our operations separate for a reason. He knows what goes on here, but we don’t tell him everything.
"I'll make it okay." The words sound impressive, but I have no clue how I will accomplish this. I'm operating in a hurricane, and all I have is a flimsy umbrella to protect me from this storm.
Matthew lifts his chin then pushes the door shut behind him. "I called because your dad is messing up. My clients, well, the clients you have me oversee, won't be any problem. But…"
He doesn't finish the sentence, which is wise. The lump in my throat seems to grow. I swallow, knowing things are bad if Matthew is saying something. I close my eyes and shake my head.
“Has anyone swept the offices recently?”
Matthew shrugs. I key open the cabinet next to my desk. Behind the cabinet is a secret storage compartment. I use the code which Matthew can’t see me entering, and I pull out the device we use to block recording devices. It’s excessive to be so paranoid with the equipment, but if someone figures out how to override the device, we’d be screwed. With the blocking equipment operating, I nod to Matthew.
“Tell me how bad it is.”
Matthew sits in the chair opposite me and leans in. “Your father has been less than discrete lately.”
“I’m sorry.” I don’t know what I’m apologizing for, but it seems to be the right thing to do.
“You need to keep him away.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him.” I raise both hands to him and shake my head. “Sorry, it’s not your responsibility.”
Matthew's lips thin. "This place is my responsibility. You've always compensated me more than fairly. Your father took a chance on me when I was young and hired me. He never put me in any compromising positions, and I respect the hell out of him for that. He could have expected me to do things I wouldn't have been willing to do back then, but he never did that. Now that I've been here for more than two decades, I have an idea what happens with those clients I have no dealings with. They are few but very powerful. You all have done a great job keeping it all separate. I think I can help."
I sit back and steeple my hands, wondering if this is one of the answers to my problems. “Dad isn’t ever going to be capable of working here again. There’s something terribly wrong with him, and I think I’m going to have to put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance so he doesn’t show up here and make any more mistakes.”
“Like I said, I can help,” Matthew says.
The relief almost makes me sigh. “I’ll need you to pick up a chunk of the workload.”
“I can do that. I’ve hired a new person to help with the main office.”
I need someone I can trust. This isn’t a position I can hire just anyone for. “We have to keep the two entities totally separate.” Worry fills me. This might be too much for someone outside the circle of our family to know about.
Matthew nods. “I’ve got you.”
