Page 52

Unless she thought about me often. And thinks about me often.

Unless Jamie’s dad isn’t some poet she met at a coffee shop…

“This is wild,” Tuck says, barging into my office. I am holding the meeting with Natalie and my accountants here because I want this conversation sealed tight. I don’t even want it to take place in a boardroom. “So you really think there’s something fishy going on inside ME?”

I half shrug. “That’s the way it looks,” I say.

“Wow,” he breathes out. “You think it’s the old man?”

“Jim Blythe?” I ask.

“I mean, think about it. You bought shares, shares offered to you, and then you shove the old guy aside because there can’t be two CEOs. Now, all of a sudden, there’s money missing? Sounds too coincidental to be a coincidence…”

I hadn’t thought about that, if I am being honest. I know Jim is spiteful that I own the majority of shares in the company he founded. But he’s been in the industry forever and Mission’s reputation for honest business has always been clean.

“You never know who people really are,” Tuck goes on, and I suppose he’s right. We don’t.

A few minutes later, my accountants Terry and Steve arrive and Natalie shortly after that. We take seats around my desk, and I tell them what Natalie told me. Then, I let her show them. These guys are a bit on the older side though, and while they know their shit, they can also be old school.

“So you figured out that money is being siphoned from the profits of recent events, specifically on the ME side of things,” Terry says.

“Well, I figured that out,” Natalie says, and neither of them look at her.

“Have any expenses gone up, even small ones, that could have added up to pushing outside of the budgets without realizing it?” Steve asks.

“What do you mean?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I know exactly what he means. Unfortunately, so does Natalie, but she isn’t as good at biting her tongue as I am.

“Are you implying that I’ve overspent on event jobs and ignored the budgets?” she asks.

“It would be easy to do,” Terry says. “Women like to spend money and often buy things that are a hundred more here, a thousand more there.”

Natalie’s glare becomes flammable, and I hold a hand up. “Natalie Blythe is my director of events. She pays very close attention to the budget. It's something she keeps at the forefront of her performance, and she has never breached those boundaries before,” I say. “I believe this leak isn’t as simple as Natalie or anyone else on her team spending two grand on place settings instead of fifteen hundred. I think this is a softer scrape off the top of literally every transaction. A slower siphon that is draining us.”

“So embezzlement,” Steve states.

“Embezzlement,” I repeat. “From somewhere deeper.”

“Who has access to the funds at M.E.?” Terry asks. “To spending in general.”

“A lot of people, honestly,” I breathe out. “Project managers submit expenses, design teams work within allotted budgets, and accounting releases the payments. Garrett, as director of operations and technical production, can approve production vendors and event budgets. But if you look back, this has been happening for just over two years.”

“If you take dollars from a closely monitored account, the account owner notices,” Steve says.

“But if you take pennies,” Natalie says. “It can go on for a very long time without anyone being the wiser.”

Everyone goes quiet for a moment. “We will look more heavily into it,” Steve says as everyone stands up. “And we will get more information.”

“We will figure out who is draining the money,” Terry says.

“Glad you caught this, boss,” Steve adds, and Natalie glares at him, shaking her head and turning away. They walk out and leave her and me alone.

“Unbelievable,” she mutters.

“This has been going on for a very long time, and you were the first person to catch it,” I say.

“Exactly. I caught it. Not you. Not anyone else. Me. And yet the way those guys talked to me, you’d think I wasn’t in the room at all!”

I turn towards her. “Listen. I know they’re assholes, but they know what they’re doing.”