“Is that something a friend would tell you?” Atticus asked. “I’ve mentioned before I haven’t really had friends, so I’m not sure what’s socially acceptable or not.”
Reaching out, I gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “Trust yourself, Atty, you’re doing just fine, and I’m not merely saying that to make you feel better. I like you simply the way you are, and if you feel it’s important for me to know something, then you tell me… damn the etiquette.”
“Thank you, I appreciate your honest words, but I’m sure I’ll have more questions,” Atticus stated before he turned back to what he was working on, clearly done with this conversation.
Hopping off the table, there was a knock at the door, so I headed over to open it, praying it was my cheeseburger.
twenty-two
NothingaboutAstinfitin any of the boxes I put people in. There was a place for those in charge, co-workers, bullies, people I couldn’t stand, and those who I found mildly interesting and didn’t mind being around. There was an incredibly small percentage of people who landed in the last box—really there was only one—Luca. Like me, he didn’t fit with the others on our team yet, but unlike me, they still tried to include him.
Luca was one of the first people to stand up for me against the bullies in the Caprioni business. When I’d been given the position of lieutenant, no one understood it, not even myself. Yes, I was superior to all others when it came to numbers, and there was no one I’d met who could do it better than me. It wasn’t bragging as others accused me of—it was a simple fact. How can people dispute what’s right in front of them? Did they want the boss to have someone of inferior ability doing this important job? This is why people generally confused me.
Astin rejoined us at the table with a tray of food that she smiled down at as if she was delighted with the meal. I enjoyed a well-made meal, but I don’t know that I’ve ever looked that excited for food before. What was the point when I was just going to ingest it? The enjoyment would be over as soon as the food was gone. That’s why I like math, science, and equations I could work on or manipulate into other forms. There were endless possibilities with the same nine symbols that equated to a measurement.
That’s why I think Astin was so hard for me to put into a box. She wanted to be my friend, yet she was also my boss. Then when the others would try to bully me or brush me off, she came to my defense. Nothing about her made any sense—she was an equation with a variable I couldn’t seem to find.
Looking at my screen, taking in the flood of numbers, my mind easily put them in the proper place and calculated their value. Seeing the full picture of Continental Properties, their business wasn’t doing as well as their reports led us to believe. Once the note was called and they no longer had that float money giving them the cushion they’d grown accustomed to, it would hurt them severely. Of course, the whole plan was to cripple them to the point they would never be able to go back into business if they were allowed to live. It was clear by Astin’s comments she wasn’t planning on that happening.
As I looked at the numbers, they seemed to blur on the page as my mind wandered uninterested in their predictable nature. All I seemed to want to do was figure out the puzzle of a woman enthusiastically eating her meal at the head of the table. What about me did she find so appealing that she singled me out to be her friend? None of the others got that offer. Nor was she offended when I asked questions or challenged her view on something. Was this what my mother had been talking about when she said I’d know when I met the right person?
It has been six years since she passed, and I wish every day she was still around. Like Astin, she could talk to me and explain things I didn’t understand in a way that didn’t make me feel stupid. My brain worked differently than others—it saw things in black and white, right and wrong, rules and laws. When situations didn’t follow any of these paths, I didn’t know how to handle the expectation that came with it. Mother used to tell me my father was just like me, and she loved that I reminded her of him. I’d never had the chance to meet him since he died overseas as a military operative who worked with our intelligence agency. He was sent on a mission and never came back.
Needing the money to pay for Mother’s medical bills once her cancer became so aggressive she needed around-the-clock care, I stumbled my way into working for one of the boss’s bookies. He was willing to pay me a large sum of money to keep the books, and he liked, even more, the fact I didn’t need to write most of it down. I caught the boss’s eye when I discovered the man I was working for was skimming money off the top. He didn’t think I’d notice since he never wrote it down, but he also gave me the sheets for the earnings of the bets. Numbers never lie, even when people do.
The bookie was replaced, and I was given an even better job working in the main headquarters as Boss learned what I could really do for his company. I’d never had the chance to go to college, but Boss didn’t care if I had a degree or not as long as I could do the job, which I could easily. Soon after that, I was brought to work under the previous lieutenant, shadowing him and then taking his place when he was removed. Knowing the man well enough, I could safely say he’d have been a terrible fit to work with Astin. James hated the idea of women being anywhere outside of the home.It’s where they belonged, he used to tell me constantly.
Now here I was the lieutenant to the first female underboss of the Caprioni Family. It was important I do my job well so as not to fail her or the boss who’d given me the chance. Astin needed me to find out what these men were up to and how to hit them where it hurt. The bill against them of five million would be a large stumbling block, but I was still working through some of their other ventures they didn’t use us for. If we weren’t the ones giving them the money, who else was?
“I found the property,” Gunner announced. “It’s about an hour outside the city, and if I’m reading this right, nowhere near the right size for the plans they showed me.”
Astin paused in her eating to ponder Gunner’s findings. “Could it be that Harvey is fucking with them? Or do you think they gave us all fake information?”
Gunner frowned at his computer as if he was frustrated it wasn’t telling him what he wanted to know. “That’s the thing, the plot of land isn’t anything they would want. It makes me wonder if they’ve even seen what Harvey is trying to sell them or if he’s pulling a bait and switch.”
“You said it’s an hour outside the city?” Astin inquired, getting to her feet and walking over to look at the screen. “Who do we have that can get out there fast, take pictures, and give us feedback? Something about this doesn’t seem right to me. Harrison and Raymond don’t seem the mastermind type to come up with a plan like this. My gut says Harvey is using those two greedy idiots, and they don’t even realize it. If we snatch up a piece of land that’s been sitting there forever, Harvey’s going to know we figured it out.”
Everyone looked at her with surprise. How had she come to that conclusion with only the small bit of information Gunner had just provided? Now that she explained it, I had to agree with her. If Continental Properties was going to buy it, then they should have done it already. A project this large, even with our help to grease the wheels with permits, would take a full year, if not more.
“Are you saying you think this is all a trap?” Ryker asked what we were all thinking.
She stood and started to pace around the table again like a caged animal frustrated with its confined space. “No, I don’t think all of it’s a trap. What I think is… this is a test to see how well we are paying attention. When I first learned about this, I wanted to buy the property right away to prevent them from having it. I’m thinking that’s what most people would do in my place, and that’s what they’re looking for. If we have someone go out there, take in the site, and tell me it’s a dump and not at all what you would need to build a theme park on, then I guess we’ll have our answer.”
Gunner grabbed his phone and made a call, excusing himself from the table to tell whoever what we needed done.
“Atty,” she called, drawing my attention. “Has anything you’ve done so far been traceable if someone went looking, or has it been based on all our own records?”
“I was just about to investigate who’s been giving them smaller loans for projects they’ve never brought to us. While I’m an expert in numbers, Ryker is the one who would be able to answer that question since he’s a hacker,” I explained. “Although everything I’ve done up to this point has been from our data.”
“Good, hold off on that other stuff for now. Ryker, I want you to run whatever scan or code you need to ensure whatever we look up on them won’t be traced back to us. From now on, I want us all to act like every step, every keystroke, every phone call is being monitored,” Astin ordered. “If Harvey is using these idiots as a patsy, then I don’t want to give him the information he’s looking for. He needs to think we don’t have a clue what he’s up to.”
“Luca, can you tell me if they send or receive anything through you? I mean, drugs and supplies of any kind, even if it’s a special kind of toilet paper you can only get from Tabor,” Astin requested, walking over to his seat.
“That’s the odd part… they used to use us to get all the specialty building supplies that would cost a small fortune here. They order so sporadically I didn’t notice it’s been six months since they’ve needed something,” Luca informed her. “Normally, it’s two or three but never this long, and cross-checking the buildings they’ve finished recently, they should have ordered something. They have an obsession with this certain kind of gold-veined granite that’s hard to get and costs about ten thousand a slab. Usually, they call me to get it imported from where it’s mined in Apria, so they don’t pay the taxes on imported goods.”
The look of anger that clouded Astin’s face had me alert. Never before could I read someone as easily as I could her, but it made me wonder if it’s because she doesn’t hide her emotions like the rest of us have been taught to, or if she just feels them so strongly others can’t help but feel it coming off her.
“Who’s our biggest competition in the harbor?” Astin demanded. “Seems we’ve been slipping if someone is stepping on our biggest money-maker.”