Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 253(@250wpm)___ 211(@300wpm)
That night I sit with Yuri and watch the feed from the compound. Teams install the new cameras. The second gate goes in beautifully. Floodlights illuminate every corner of the exterior. We’ve set up a room to double as a clinic for now. An OB nurse sends me a list of supplies she wants. I approve it without asking the price.
At midnight, I’m back at the table with a pen and a yellow pad. I write out every task I can think of. I’ll have to work with Mari to get the OB appointments scheduled. I also need my lawyer to draw up legal documents for guardianship, medical access, and changes to my will. I make a note to ensure cash is stocked at the compound.
Then I start running background checks on the nurse, a few drivers, and the doctor Mari insists on using. The truth is, Yuri or Marcus could handle this, but I won’t risk any gaps. As the saying goes, if you want it done right, do it yourself.
At nearly two in the morning, I sit back and look at my list. I can’t possibly add more to it, yet I still feel like it isn’t enough. What am I missing? What could go wrong?
I’m terrified for them. I’m terrified of losing them. Mari will complain, she’ll say I’m being overprotective and controlling, but she can’t understand how this feels.
When I lost my wife, Tatianna, it was like there would never be anything good in this world again. She was kind and good, and I was young enough and stupid enough to believe that love could conquer anything.
In the end, I failed her. When someone went after me, she got caught in the crossfire and was killed. That was my fault. That bullet had my name on it, and I couldn’t protect her when it mattered most.
I know Mari understands this now. I know she can see that my protectiveness comes from a real place. I also know it’s driving her crazy, and she doesn’t like the rules I’m imposing.
She’ll just have to get over it. And she will. I know that too. I think she’s starting to feel the same way about me that I feel about her, and if that’s true, she sees that this is a struggle for me too. Any time I’m away from her, I’m terrified that’s the moment someone takes her away from me forever.
But the most terrifying thing of all is how happy I am with her. She’s brought a lightness to my life that I’ve never experienced before, not even with Tati. She’s bringing our child into the world, which is more joy than I ever expected to have.
And I’ll be damned if I ever let anyone take that away from me.
21
MARI
Ten a.m. finds me buried in a vendor list I’ve been combing for days. The office hums with the same quiet chaos as every other day, but a tight knot pulls in my chest I can’t quite name. Maybe it’s that Lev isn’t here. He’s off doing God knows what, and I don’t ask. I focus on work instead. It’s the one thing I can control.
My eyes start to swim, so I open a fresh workbook and pull three years’ worth of vendor records, tagging each new payee by month, then mapping them against bank timestamps and batch IDs.
I’ve done this several times already, but this time I’m even more thorough, checking who requested each vendor, who confirmed the W-9s, who approved the payments. It’s boring, tedious work for most people, but the devil is in the details.
For me, numbers tell a story. And eventually that story should name who has stolen millions from Levcon. I run the numbers slowly, check the data carefully, and realize that six months ago the embezzler got bolder. At first they skimmed small amounts from normal vendor disbursements. Six months ago, though, they started taking much larger pulls right before the end of the quarter, then burying them in fake vendor records.
I open my research notes and sort the transactions by who approved them. The name pops up on my screen, big and bold, and I fight to keep my composure. I can’t accuse him without absolute, solid evidence. Two approvals could be a coincidence.
I keep digging, pulling audits from other vendors. I sit there for two hours, combing through approvals, routing numbers, invoices. He’s been so careful about it, so clean that it was easy to miss. But now that I’ve found the pattern, I can’t unsee it, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’ve found the guy. Quietly and carefully, I export a PDF summary and stash it in a folder named Q3 Archive – Receipts just in case he’s watching me somehow.
I password-protect the document and send it to my personal email account with a boring, easy-to-ignore subject line. Then I print three key pages from the document, highlight the transactions, and slip them into a bland manila folder, willing my hands to stop shaking.