“I’m impressed. It’s almost as if you know how to use the internet.” I cocked a brow, daring Brandon to accuse me of something. “Is there a point to this or do you enjoy wasting my time?”
He’d come here expecting to rattle me. Maybe get me to make a mistake. I could see it in his face, the downturned lips and the pinched eyes. He could continue to be sorely disappointed for all I cared.
D’s stiletto heel found my shin, and she kicked. Hard. I didn’t wince, but she’d drawn blood. I felt it trickling down my shin and staining my suit.
“Forgive me. I’ll get to the point.” He eyed the rat before stepping closer. “Mr. Prescott, do you know what insider trading is?”
Rosco approached Brandon and sniffed his leg. I imagined him taking a piss on the fucker’s shoes. For a second, I thought he’d finally make his four-thousand-dollar price tag worth it. But the traitor curled up against it and laid down.
The motherfucking rat.
“Toddlers from Old Greenwich know what insider trading is.” I powered on my laptop and began sifting through the emails my Singaporean contacts had sent me. “Spare me the dramatics, and actually get to the point when you say you’ll get to the point.”
When I glanced up, Brandon’s face remained frozen for a half-second longer than necessary, his cool slipping like melted FroYo before he collected himself. “Fine. Let me lay it out for you.”
He placed two palms on my desk as if the movement would intimidate me. Leaning across the table, he lessened the gap between us until his chest brushed against the back of my laptop.
I responded to an email as he continued, “You came from a poverty-stricken family, yet you’ve amassed a substantial fortune in the past four years, particularly right after the fall of Winthrop Textiles. Two parties gained a large sum from the collapse of the company. You’re one of them.”
He gestured around the penthouse suite, which despite being sparsely furnished until the designers had the opportunity to do their jobs in here, boasted an ocean view I’d paid tens of millions of dollars for.
“Before I accuse you of anything and before you deny anything,” he bit out, “I saw Emery Winthrop here last night, a name tag pinned to her dress, working for you. Too many threads connect you to Winthrop Textiles for it to be coincidental. I am good at my job, and if there’s anything for me to find, I’ll find it. You may as well save both of us time and talk to me now. We can work out a deal.”
I pressed send on the email and glanced up at him in time to see his self-satisfied grin. Ripping out of his Saks Off 5th outlet suit and eyebrows so neat they had to be waxed, he looked more like a Tod with one D than a Brandon.
He knew too much for me to dismiss him, but I stood knee-deep in this shit I’d helped create for me to shift the blame onto someone else. If anything, this very moment had been in the making for seven years.
It seemed as inevitable as taxes.
I tilted my head to the side, taking the time to look down my nose at him despite the fact that he stood while I sat. “Does that ever work?”
“More often than you’d think.”
Delilah stepped forward, the picture of calmness. She reminded me of the principal parents and students secretly feared. Eyes that had seen everything in the book and remained unimpressed. “Agent Vu, I think it’s best you leave now. We have a strict schedule to adhere to, and if you’d like to talk any further, you may contact me and only me.”
Brandon’s eyes flickered between me and Delilah before he straightened and nodded. “Think about my offer, Mr. Prescott.” He tossed a business card onto the desk. “A deal doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
After Delilah shut the door behind Brandon, she turned back to me, a vein bulging on her temple. I’d once named it Delilah Jr. “What part of ‘do not talk’ do you not understand?”
“The words ‘do’, ‘not’, and ‘talk’.”
“Nash, this is serious.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
In my opinion, insider trading fell on the lowest rung on my list of crimes. I always knew I couldn’t hide the money I’d made from trading in Winthrop Textiles stock, but insider trading was difficult to prove, and I’d done a good job of cleaning my tracks.
What I hadn’t known was someone else had profited from the fall of Winthrop Textiles.
I slid out my drawer and brushed my knuckles over the charred leather I traveled with. “Get me a P.I.”
Delilah’s nose curled up at the sight of the burnt leather, but she said nothing. Her naked, furless rat pawed at her legs to be held. “What about Fika?”
“Fika is gone.” At the horror in her eyes, I rolled mine. “Relax. Gone as in fired. Fucker’s still alive and kicking.”
“Jesus, Nash.”
“Let’s not involve him. He’s never been my biggest fan.”
She ignored me. “You don’t tell someone a man with cancer is ‘gone.’ You also don’t pay me to be your assistant. Find your own P.I.”
I would have taken her more seriously had she not picked up Rosco and pet the five strands of hair on his body. “This shit again?”
“I deserve a raise.”
“Done.”
“But I don’t need one.”
Truth.
Her husband came from old money. The next ten generations of her family could stop working and still fund ten Star Wars franchises.
“What do you need, D?” I quirked a brow, giving her my full attention.
“Why do you assume I need something?”
“No one does anything out of the goodness of their heart.”
“You do.” So she thought. “You’re a cranky asshole, but you spend your nights feeding people at soup kitchens regardless of the town we’re in, you take care of your family, you donate a shit ton of your income, and you have never passed someone in need without expensing help.”
She made me sound like the saint Eastridge had made me out to be. The reality couldn’t be further than that. The word penance tattooed where my forearm and elbow met reminded me of this each time I stripped myself bare and forced myself to look in the mirror.
I ignored her Nash-Prescott-is-a-saint canonization speech and got to the point. “I need someone not connected to the company. Not the investigator with your legal department. An independent private investigator who isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty.”
Someone like Fika, I didn’t say.
Burning bridges seemed to be a habit of mine. I’d go as far as considering it a hobby if I didn’t need those bridges to walk across.
“What’s being investigated?” Emerald eyes studied me, waiting for me to give something away.
“Vu mentioned a second party profiting off the Winthrop Textiles scandal. I want to know who.”
“Are we going to talk about how you’re one of those two parties?”
“No.”
She paused a beat, and finally, something other than indifference flickered into her eyes. Guilt, maybe. “About Emery Winthrop…”
I held up a palm to stop her. “I know. Spare me the lecture. She had a catering gig last night. We won’t hire them again.”