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“Well… uh… I…”
“Our contract states an 11:59 pm delivery time. A single minute past midnight, and you forfeit fifty percent of the sale price. That means you’d actuallyoweme three grand.Andyou’d still have to deliver. Do you think coming here today was a good use of your time?”
No. It wasn’t.
He dashes out without another word and makes my double doors rattle on the hinges when he slams them shut. Shaking my head, I sit back and push a long exhale out through my nose. Tasker Rogers is smart as hell, but his bad attitude means he’ll never be offered a position within Griffin.
Remembering the job application that slid across my desk a few days ago from Darla Kline, I dig through the pile and tug it out. Scanning the information on the front, I shake my head a second time, scrunch it into a ball, and toss it into the trash.
If Tasker’s assistant is handing out the wrong banking details, I don’t want her. My staff is expected to perform with accuracy. If you’re employed by Griffin Industries, you’re regarded as one of the best, you’re considered elite, you’re expected to pay a-fucking-ttention to detail, and when you perform, you’re rewarded.
I don’t consider my expectations unreasonable. If they were, people would stop tossing their résumés onto my desk every single day.
I close my eyes for a moment when the doors stop vibrating, pull a long breath through my nose until my chest expands, then I let it out again and reopen my eyes.
Okay. Time to work.
I don’t know who the fuck Sophia Solomon is, but her name popped up in a search last week. Not a big deal – names are always sliding across my screen – but when that same name pops up twice, and then a third time in less than a week, it’s time for me to take another look.
Twenty-six years old, classically trained ballerina turned dance instructor at a dance academy that is mere months old. I lift a brow at that and begin searching deeper.
It could be as it looks on the outside; she’s young, maybe she blew out her knee in rehearsals and fucked her chances of becoming a pro dancer, so now she’s opened a new studio with hopes to train a new prima ballerina. But a new studio, a twenty-six-year-old, and five-year-old students – why has Miss Solomon got bank accounts overflowing with cash? Why has the Ellie Solomon Dance Academy listed themselves as a not-for profit, but their accounts are bursting at the seams?
Looks like a damn profit to me.
And who is Ellie Solomon?
I spend hours sliding through the start-up files for this baby business, and the deeper I go, the larger my smile grows. Whoever set her up pays attention to details the way I expect of my employees. Her tax files are beyond reproach, her reporting is spotless, her legal team well established.
The only smear is the profit. No small-town dance school earns millions in their first year. No fucking chance. Had it not been for her bank balance, and the fact that her dance studio is set up in the same small town that Colum Bishop was executed in, I would have walked away already.
It all looks exactly as it should, except that it doesn’t.
Day turns to night while I scroll and file information away in the back of my mind. I sip cold coffee and frown at the grumbles coming from my stomach. I’m hungry, and it’s long past dinnertime.
But then I sit taller when a name flashes across my screen.
Two names.
Three names.
“Well, shit.” I lean closer to aid my straining eyes as familiar names blink at me like flashing neon signs.
Some are familiar. Some are new, to be added to my list. And one blast from the past nearly flattens me. I bring her driver’s license up to fill my screen, and simply… stare.
“Elizabeth fucking Tate…” I shake my head. “Is a cop.”
