Me: You know… if you paid a little extra they’d deliver it to your building. Want me to loan you some money?
Grey: Yes, please. I’ll take twenty million. Feel free to pay it in the form of a nice estate in Connecticut.
I sighed. Playtime was clearly over.
Me: Sir, yes, sir.
Grey: Be back at the office before the 4pm meeting. I need to ask you about Desi.
I reread the text, wondering what he wanted to know about Desi Martinez, York’s CFO. More than that, I was taken off guard by the fact he might actually want my opinion on something having to do with the business.
Maybe we were finally getting somewhere. And maybe he’d be willing to trade my help for access to my mother’s jewelry.
7
Grey
“If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Ian Duckworth was as ornery and combative as the first two times I’d met with him, if not more so. I wasn’t sure what his problem was with me, but I could safely assume it had something to do with my takeover of his buddy’s company.
It turned out Ian Duckworth and Warren York were close family friends, or at least their wives were. Great. It wasn’t often that I missed a crucial piece of intel, but then again, I didn’t usually need to investigate the spouses’ friends of the people I targeted.
I wondered if Ellison had known about the connection, and I figured he probably had but had let me go in blind anyway. No doubt he’d tell me this was what came of instructing him to speak only when spoken to.
It turned out compliant, dutiful Ellison York had a sassy streak.
Even more surprising was the fact that it made me hot as fuck.
I came back into the office in a horrible mood. Even though I knew better than to get emotionally involved in a business endeavor, it seemed like that was all I’d been doing lately. This Blackwood Center project was the effort of my fucking heart, and I wasn’t going to let one stodgy old man keep me from success.
I needed to retrench and reassess.
Someone shoved a cold water bottle into my hand. “Drink this,” Ellison said, meeting me in the hallway.
“Why? Are you trying to poison me?”
“No. That’s scheduled for this evening. Right now, I’m trying to perk you up. You’re going to need your wits about you when you meet with Desi.”
I followed him to the large conference room. “Isn’t it usually coffee that perks a person up?” I cracked open the water and took a grateful gulp.
“Yes, but you’ve already had enough of that for now. If you down the water, I’ll let you have another cup of coffee during the meeting.”
I glanced over at him to see if he was trolling me. He seemed to be serious. “I think you’re taking this personal assistant thing too seriously,” I muttered before taking another grateful sip of the cold water. “Next, you’ll be monitoring my fiber intake. I already have one know-it-all PA.”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve asked Nikki to include some apples in the snack tray for the meeting. Be sure to eat one.” He grinned at me, and it made something in my chest flip. “Kidding. I’m kidding. Well, I’m not. But only because I like apples.”
Ellison York was ten times more charming and engaging than I remembered, and I remembered him being charming and engaging as hell. I didn’t want to like the guy. Maybe this PA idea had been a mistake. It wasn’t the first time I’d had the thought.
“Okay, but seriously,” he said once we were closed off in the conference room. “What did you want to know about Desi?”
I thought of the York CFO and his longtime loyalty to Warren York. “I want to know how trustworthy he is.”
“He’s always seemed completely aboveboard to me,” he said with a wrinkle of confusion on his forehead. “Are you asking for a particular reason?”
I nodded. “He has some questionable personal investments.”
Ellison seemed taken aback. “What do you mean by questionable?”
I tried ignoring the way Ellison’s shoulders and chest filled out his shirt or the way his unruly hair flicked out above one ear. The spot under his chin that he must have missed while shaving this morning was a magnet for my eyes, so I forced myself to concentrate on his mouth instead.
Mistake.
I swallowed and refocused on the topic at hand. During my massage last night, I’d thought long and hard about how much of this to trust Ellison with. “Outside of the scope of his job here, he has invested in three of York’s clients’ companies as well as two Heath and Kelty client companies.”
“Personally?” he asked, frowning. “That’s against company policy because of the obvious conflict of interest. Are you sure?”
I nodded and told him how I’d accidentally discovered it in a few conversations with clients.
“Could it be a miscommunication of some kind?”
“I wondered the same. But I learned he owns an interest in a company that’s listed in the investor rolls for the companies. I saw a name I didn’t recognize repeated several times and looked into it. It’s an LLC Desi has partial ownership in.”
I could tell this was the first he’d heard of it. “Maybe he doesn’t manage the holdings and didn’t know about the investments?”
“Maybe. That’s what I’d like to find out. I didn’t have time to research it more thoroughly. I’d like to discover I’m in the wrong here. Desi is a valuable asset to this company, but not if I can’t trust him.”
Ellison nodded. “I think you should ask him about it.”
“I agree. Let’s ask him, but what’s the best approach? I don’t know him like you do.”
A slight flush crept up Ellison’s neck, and his eyes flitted away from me. His response coiled tightly in my gut.
“Well, if you truly want to get him to confide, I’d probably suggest having me talk to him alone casually before you come in. Maybe you can show up late to the meeting, and I can chat him up in the meantime.”
I studied him, wondering if he would tip the man off instead of actually questioning him for my own purposes. How would I know which he chose?
My idea was unethical, but I didn’t trust either man enough to care. I surreptitiously set my phone to record and slid it into the seat next to mine under the table, where it was hidden from view under the edge of my computer bag.
“Okay,” I said, standing up.
“How did it go with Duckworth?” Ellison asked.
The memory of that belligerent man set my teeth on edge. “He is immovable.”
Ellison studied me for a minute. “I may have some insight for you on that front, but we can talk about it after the meeting.”
I nodded and headed out, murmuring that I needed to consult with my transition team downstairs for a few minutes. When I made my way down to the temporary office, Marcel’s face lit up. “There he is. The man who no longer needs me. I can’t tell you what an absolute joyous vacation I’ve had today. Oh wait, I seem to have forgotten the stacks and stacks of tedious monotony you left for me to handle in your absence. Silly me.”