by Lena Skye
“Bullshit,” Sam said. He threw his hands up. “What the hell are you doing, Dani?”
“I’m living my life,” Danielle said, as calmly as she could. “Why the hell are you so worried about what I’m doing with my life anyway?”
“You’re dating someone connected to my enemies,” Sam replied, his voice taking on a chilling note. “Of course I fucking care.”
“He occasionally does business with them, that’s all,” Danielle said, rolling her eyes again. “He got financing from the Sokolovs early on, and he’s had a few business dealings with them on legit things. That is literally it.”
It was more than she wanted to tell her brother, but Danielle knew that Sam would keep winding himself up if she didn’t give him some kind of information about the man she was seeing. He would start accusing her of working against him—and then where would either of them be?
“And you wouldn’t even agree to talk to him about working with my people,” Sam said, sitting down finally, with a sigh.
“I wouldn’t agree to spy on him either,” Danielle told him tartly. “It’s been hard keeping myself legit, and I’m not going to risk it.” Sam scowled at her, but it was a disappointed expression rather than an angry one.
“Do you think I don’t respect the fact that you’re not in the business?”
Danielle raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve done everything you can to try and keep me on the edges of your business for as long as I’ve been a grown woman,” she pointed out. “If you do respect me wanting to be legit so much, why would you keep trying to get me back onto your side?”
“I want you to have everything you deserve,” Sam said, calming down a little more. “I want you to be able to live in a nice place, have nice clothes—not be worried about bills.” Danielle folded her hands on the table in front of her.
“And with this job—and with Victor—I have that,” Danielle said quietly. “He’s paying me a hundred thousand a year, and a clothing stipend per month on top of that. I have great benefits.” She held her brother’s gaze. “If this is really what you want for me, then I’m begging you, don’t screw this up for me, Sam.”
“You know some of the higher-ups I work with would pay you even more money, if you could give us an ‘in’ to Andersson,” Sam told her quietly. “It wouldn’t be anything bad—I would make sure of it.”
“Just to let you get it off your chest, I’ll let you tell me what you’re thinking about,” Danielle said, knowing there was no way around it. If she gave him an unconditional ‘no’ again, it would just wind him up further. “But I’m not promising to agree to it or even tell Victor about it.”
“We’re looking into real estate,” Sam said. “Things are starting to get better in some of the neighborhoods, and we want to be in on that.” Danielle looked at her brother skeptically, but gestured for him to go on. “He could invest, and we’d be able to pay him back over time—with a high interest.”
“I don’t know,” Danielle said quietly. “You’re being too vague.”
“It wouldn’t be anything illegal,” Sam told her. “It would be perfectly legal, and it would be upfront. Just some real estate operations. It’s a place for us to focus some efforts on legit business, instead of on...the other stuff we’re involved in.”
Danielle didn’t believe her brother, and she hated the fact that she couldn’t believe him. Sam and his friends had never—in all the time she’d known them—had an issue with the fact that the Bey family enterprises were almost entirely illegal, or at the very least skirted the edges of legality. She couldn’t believe that he or the organization wanted to go legit.
Even in the case of the Sokolovs, Danielle knew that Nikolai was somewhat of an outlier; the majority of the family was firmly invested in drugs, trafficking, and similar pursuits. Nikolai himself wasn’t entirely—to the best of Danielle’s knowledge—interested in getting out of the family business.
He liked having legit businesses, but Danielle was fairly certain that those were mostly a hedge against being caught up by the Feds for tax evasion—the same thing that had caught so many other members and bosses in organized crime. Where they couldn’t get evidence of murder, theft, or other things, they almost always managed to eventually find evidence of fraud or tax problems—and that put a person in jail just as readily.
“I’ll think about it,” Danielle said. “Send me a proposal with details, and I’ll think about showing it to Vic.” Sam frowned.
“Vic?” He shook his head slowly. “Sis, why are you dating him? He’s your boss.”
“He’s a good man,” Danielle replied. “He likes me and I like him. He’s fun to be around.” Sam shrugged.
“As long as you don’t go throwing yourself at someone who might replace you in a month,” Sam said warningly.
“He’s not going to do that,” Danielle countered, feeling a bit piqued at Sam’s assertion.
“Dani—he’s a billionaire,” Sam said. “We don’t even make the kind of money he’s made. He could buy a wife from Sweden if he wanted to, or Russia or wherever. He could buy a wife here, if he wanted to.”
“He doesn’t want to, clearly,” Danielle pointed out, her voice tart.
“I’m just saying,” Sam said. “It might be a good idea for you to take the offer we could give you—because Andersson could decide tomorrow that he doesn’t need someone to run his charity programs, but if you got us an ‘in’ we could pay you enough that it wouldn’t matter for a while...you could take your time finding a new job.” Danielle rolled her eyes.
“I don’t want a new job,” she said. “And I’m not some 19-year-old naive little girl. I’m twenty-five. I know what I want and I know how I’m going to live my life.” Danielle rose to her feet. “Do you want to have coffee and talk about other things? Because as far as the current topic of discussion is concerned, I’m done.” Sam looked at her for a long moment and Danielle suspected that he would try and press the point.
“I’ll have a cup of coffee,” Sam said, and Danielle moved to pour him one, turning her back on her brother and thinking as she stepped through the kitchen. He was going to find some way to try and make her do what he wanted; she knew it. It wasn’t fair.
He claims to want me to be happy, but he just wants me to be happy on his terms, she thought. If he really wanted me to be happy and wealthy and that’s it, he would accept that trying to get Victor involved in some kind of not-quite-legal dealings would put my job on the line. She poured coffee for her brother and refreshed her own cup, adding a little more sugar and milk to hers.
“So how are things outside the business? Are you still seeing that girl—Shanice, was it?”
“Shanice and I are good,” Sam replied. “I’m still seeing her, but things aren’t all that serious.”
“You’ve been seeing her for what—three months now? Four?” Danielle wagged her finger at her brother. “You’d better be getting serious with her, or you’ll lose her.” Sam chuckled.
“She isn’t even that serious,” Sam countered. “She’s pretty much just into letting things flow.” Danielle dismissed that with a snort, but the air between her and her brother was—for the most part, she hoped—cleared, and they began talking about other things.
She had a hair appointment to go to that afternoon, but she thought that she could probably get her brother off the topic of using her new position to further his career with the Bey family by giving him an “in” with her boss for long enough that he wouldn’t insist on it before he left.
In the back of her mind, Danielle tried to decide whether or not to even tell Victor about Sam’s appearance on her doorstep. She had no intention of going through with what Sam wanted; she was convinced that his plot—the business that he wanted Victor to invest in—was not going to be something she could, with any credibility, present to her boss.
She was also sure that even if he did send her a proposal, it would not be legitimate or fully upfront. It would be something that Sa
m would think she could approve and put her name behind to the man she was seeing; and then the truth of the matter would out. She didn’t want to risk losing her job with Victor, and even more than that—now that she and he had started dating, making their relationship that little bit more complicated—she didn’t want to risk losing him.
By the time Sam had left, Danielle decided that she would give him a few days to come up with a proposal, and then look at it. Depending on what Sam presented to her, she could decide whether or not she would even tell Victor about what her brother wanted. In the meantime, Danielle thought, she would keep the visit as much to herself as possible. She made a mental note to make sure never to go to any of the areas where Sam’s guys tended to congregate, so they wouldn’t be as likely to see her and Victor out and about. It was the most she could do to try and protect herself from her brother’s schemes, and to keep those parts of her life separate.
But Danielle thought bleakly that no matter what she did, there was going to come a point in time when she simply wasn’t going to be able to keep Victor and Sam as two separate parts of her life; eventually, they were going to have to meet. She could only hope to delay that meeting as long as possible.
Chapter16
Victor got the buzz from his receptionist that his lawyer had arrived and began to minimize and close the windows on his computer so that he could focus entirely on the meeting ahead of him. It had been three months since Danielle had started working for him, and two months since she had begun spending his fortune in earnest on different charities, crowdfunding projects, and organizations.
He had trusted her, and looked over her reports before giving her the go-ahead to send the money the places it needed to go, but his lawyer had insisted on working with his accountant to make sure everything was on the up-and-up, and that they would have quarterly meetings as a sort of “check-in.”
The door buzzed and Victor pressed the button to let his lawyer into his office, thinking about Danielle just a short distance away from him, hard at work as usual; as soon as he finished with Brad, he would go and see her. Victor smiled to himself at the thought. Ever since they had started officially dating, things had been better than ever between them—especially their during-work trysts. Danielle had stressed out for a little while about Sam finding out about them, but then, after about a week, she had said that her brother hadn’t come to her about any kind of business deal he wanted and so she had decided that if he already knew she was dating Victor, there was no reason for them to be careful in arranging their dates.
Brad came into the office, looking a bit concerned, carrying his usual slim portfolio case. He looked to Victor like the epitome of the lawyer-dandy: always in suits, but with unconventional colors, hair done—and he suspected that Brad even got regular manicures. Of course, like most lawyers who felt comfortable dressing to the nines, Brad was extremely good at his job; it wasn’t just that he didn’t feel the need to look overly serious and plain to make the point of his dedication, but that he paid attention to his work just as thoroughly as his wardrobe.
In a way, the fact that Brad dressed so extravagantly had been part of the reason Victor had hired the man to work for him: someone who could afford to maintain that level of high-send style was making good money, and generally that indicated that they were good at their job.
“Good to see you again, Brad,” Victor said, rising to his feet to shake the other man’s hand as the lawyer approached the desk.
“Always good to see you, Vic,” Brad agreed, accepting the handshake. “I’m afraid this is not going to be the best meeting though—there are some irregularities we need to discuss.” Victor frowned.
“Irregularities? What’s up?” He sat down and so did Brad, opening his portfolio case and beginning to take out the tools of his trade.
“I’ve been going over Danielle’s contributions and expenditures, and most of them are absolutely fine,” Brad began. “But there have been a few in the past couple of weeks that are highly, highly suspect.” Victor raised an eyebrow at that. He couldn’t think of anything that Danielle had brought to him in her summaries that had seemed out of the ordinary: every one of the projects, funding campaigns, organizations, and more that she’d reported to him, to spend the daily half-million on, had seemed much in the same character as everything else.
“What do you mean, suspect?” Victor wracked his mind to try and remember something—anything—that might seem suspicious, even to a sharp-minded lawyer like Brad.
“On the surface, they seem like the same run-of-the-mill items,” Brad admitted. “So, it isn’t your fault that you didn’t notice them. But of course, I’ve been doing digging on all the projects you’re funding, all the charities, et cetera, and I’ve seen a few that are not—or at least which don’t seem—like they’re in good faith, below the surface.” Victor stared at his attorney.
“Okay, maybe you should just go ahead and get to the main point on this, because you’re losing me,” Victor said.
“There are about five different things that Danielle has put your money towards which turn out to be—through go-betweens and cover companies and such—programs by the Bey family,” Brad said.
“What?” Brad nodded slowly, turning the tablet-to-laptop device he carried with him around so that Victor could see the screen.
“I don’t know for sure if they’re money laundering schemes but considering the connection…” Brad shrugged. “While I can’t say definitely that this could come back to bite you in the ass legally, I do have to advise you that you need to find out if Danielle did this knowingly.”
Victor looked at the screen, where Brad had pulled up the details of the five items that he had funded for—apparently—members of the Bey family, in some way: one was a youth center project that he had donated to, half the daily budget. Another was a GoFundMe campaign that proclaimed to be for a project to turn an empty lot into a neighborhood playground space.
A third was a charity that—according to Brad’s notes—was, through cover companies and organizations, a front for Bey family operations. There’s no way in hell she did this knowingly, was Victor’s first thought.
“It’s not intentional,” Victor said quickly.
“How can you be sure?” Brad held his gaze steadily. The lawyer had always spoken plainly to him. “She does have a connection to the Bey family.”
“And I have just as much a connection to the Sokolovs, and you’ve never told me that the stuff that I do with Nikolai is suspect,” Victor countered.
“You’re not related to any of the Sokolovs, first of all,” Brad pointed out. “Secondly, all I’m saying is that these might be money laundering schemes. I haven’t been able to get a definitive answer on that yet—if they are, then participating in them makes you look guilty. Especially since you have previous ties to organized crime, no matter how loose those ties are and how—legally, anyway—innocent they are.”
“I want you to find out for sure whether they even are money laundering operations,” Victor told his lawyer. “I will talk to Danielle about this, but I’m not going to just assume that she is purposely putting me in a position to end up being caught in a Fed sting or something.” He sat back in his chair.
“You’re getting really defensive about this, Vic,” Brad observed, looking a little suspicious of the reason. “I know she’s beautiful and all—but if this was a guy on your payroll, would you be this worried about me jumping to a conclusion or would you be calling them in here right now to answer questions?” Victor scowled at the man.
“I know her background,” Victor said. “I hired her because like me, she’s been trying to get legit. You need to stick with your work and I’ll stick with my part of the job. Figure out if the things I donated to through her are even criminal in the first place.” Victor crossed his arms over his chest. “Because personally I can’t believe she’d do that intentionally.”
“But what if she is?” Brad looked at him frankly, unafraid. “You�
��ve known her a few months. She might have thought it would slip through, but I can guarantee you that in a court of law they wouldn’t believe that someone of your wealth would be stupid enough not to investigate thoroughly.”
“We’ve worked together for a while now, Brad,” Victor said, keeping his irritation as much under control as possible. “I appreciate the fact that you’re direct, and you don’t bullshit me. But you need to stay in your own job right now.”
He uncrossed his arms and sat fully upright in his desk chair. “I have told you what I want from you, and how we’re going to resolve this. Unless you’ve got some other problem with Danielle’s work for me, I think we’re done with this particular meeting.” For a few moments, Brad met Victor’s gaze and Victor was fairly certain his attorney was going to continue pressing the point.
“Since you’re my client, and I’m fairly certain you’re not stupid, that’s all I’ve got,” Brad said finally. “But if you find yourself having any doubts, you move fast and don’t worry about the fallout; there’s a much higher risk of much worse fallout if you’re wrong and this goes pear-shaped.”
Victor watched the man rise to his feet, and wondered if he was going to say more, but Brad just gathered up his materials, slipped them into his case, and turned to leave. Victor knew that his attorney was mad at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care too much about it—not when there was the issue of the accusations against Danielle.
He waited for Brad to leave and took a deep breath. He had been telling the truth to his lawyer: he genuinely couldn’t believe that Danielle would purposely involve his fortune in anything to do with her brother. But of course, now that the question had come up, he had to ask her.
But he had to do it in such a way that she would know, immediately, that he didn’t have any actual doubts about her. Just tell her what Brad said, and that you’re making him chase down whether it even is a money laundering scheme or anything like that, he thought. That way she can’t think that you think she’s guilty of something.
