Building Billions - Part 2 Read online

  “Ten in the morning, but there are people helping me on the other end.”

  “So what time do you need me and where?”

  “Eight o’clock at my place?”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “You’re a dick?”

  “Possibly?”

  She giggled over her coffee mug as my phone rang out into the apartment. I rolled my eyes and got up from my seat, reluctant to leave the beauty of Ashley behind. But when I saw it was Markus calling, I got excited.

  “Hey, hey, hey, Markus. What’s up?” I asked.

  “I take it you’ve already had your coffee,” he said.

  “In the process, yes,” I said.

  “Is that Markus?” Ashley asked.

  “It is.”

  “Hi, Markus!”

  “You tell that beautiful woman I said hello,” Markus said.

  “Markus says you’re beautiful and hello,” I said. “So, to what do I owe this morning phone call?”

  “I wanna take you out to lunch.”

  “I’m there,” I said. “Just tell me when and where.”

  “Toro Toro? Around noon?”

  “You want to eat at Toro Toro?” I asked.

  “Hell, yeah, I do. I love that place. I don’t have to spend a hundred bucks on lunch when I can get great food there for thirty.”

  “Toro Toro it is. I’ll see you then.”

  “Sounds like a date,” Ashley said with a grin.

  “I figured with you needing to go check on your puppy, I could get some lunch with Markus.”

  “You don’t have to pass anything by me. I get it. He’s important to you. Even if I didn’t have something to do, I wouldn’t want you to feel like you had to turn it down.”

  “You’re amazing, you know that?”

  I bent down to kiss her cheek before I went to get ready. I could hear Ashley cleaning up in the guest bathroom, and a part of me wanted her to come in here with me, to stand at the empty sink next to me and get ready, to brush her teeth with me and get in the shower so I could get in behind her.

  Hell, I’d miss lunch if that happened.

  I took her home before heading to meet Markus. I was excited about seeing him again so soon. We had a lot to talk about, especially since he’d been gone so long.

  “Took you long enough. Good thing this isn’t a business meeting,” Markus said.

  “Good to see you too,” I said.

  I embraced him and patted his back before I took my seat. It had been a long time since it had been the two of us, and I was ready for whatever was going to happen. I felt like a lost son finally finding his father in the woods or some shit.

  Like I’d been scared, but he was now there to provide comfort.

  “I take it that pretty lady stayed with you last night.”

  “And the night before,” I said.

  “I like her. You keep her. Otherwise, I’ll swoop in and claim her,” Markus said.

  “I don’t think Jamie would like that too much.”

  “You have no idea the kinds of things Jamie likes,” he said with a grin.

  “You seem happy with her. How did you guys meet?”

  “I took on a new investor, and she’s his daughter.”

  I choked on my water as he threw his head back and laughed.

  “I’m just kidding, Jimmy. We met at a bar. I was out with a couple of the guys from the board discussing some bullshit I didn’t wanna talk about, and she was sitting there all alone. Went up to her, struck up a conversation, and the next minute, we were falling into bed. Over and over and over again.”

  “You guys got anything in common?”

  “You asking because of our age difference?” he asked.

  “Possibly. I want to make sure you're not getting swindled for your money,” I said.

  “It’s nothing like that. If anything, I have to fight with her on getting her things.”

  “Fuck, Ashley’s the same way. I can’t pay for a thing in her life without it striking up some sort of discussion.”

  “That’s how you know you got a good one, when they fight you on spending money,” he said.

  “To good women,” Markus said.

  “Here, here.”

  We clinked glasses as the waitress came to take our order. Markus ordered us a round of margaritas, and I rolled my eyes. It was always a party when he was in town, and I didn’t know why I expected this lunch to be any different.

  “How did you and Ashley meet? And don’t give me this shit about work. I know you better than that,” Markus said.

  “I actually met her at the last party I threw for the company,” I said.

  “While you were still with Nina.”

  “Not the best look, I know, and part of it was fueled by the alcohol, sure.”

  “You were drinking at your own party? Must’ve been a hell of an accomplishment.”

  “It was. It was around the time we were named one of the top companies in our field worldwide,” I said.

  “Oh, that party. I got that invitation, by the way. But it was at the start of all this bullshit I’m having to deal with, so I wasn’t free to leave my post.”

  “What’s going on with that, by the way?” I asked.

  “Fuck, don’t make me go into it. I wanna enjoy my lunch before the heartburn sets in.”

  “Spoken like a true old man.”

  “You’ll get there one day, and I’ll be there to mock you.”

  “If you’re still alive,” I said with a grin.

  “You keep pushing those buttons, Jimmy.”

  “You know I’m playing with you. I can hardly believe you’re fifty-four. You only look thirty-four.”

  “I blame it on Jamie. She’s got me on this skin care bullshit. Moisturizing and wrinkle creams and masks and stuff. I couldn’t care less about the stuff, but she cares about a lot of my shit I know she hates.”

  “Aw, she wants you to stay young so she doesn’t look weird standing next to you.”

  “She calls me ‘Daddy,’ you know.”

  “And that’s enough for today,” I said.

  “Told you to keep pressing those buttons,” Markus said.

  The lunch was wonderful. We talked about nothing regarding work and talked about everything else. Ashley. Jamie. How we all met and what we all thought of everyone else. We kept poking fun at each other and drank through way too many margaritas. We had to order dessert to soak up some of the alcohol before either of us could even think about driving anywhere.

  It was almost three in the afternoon before Markus went to pay.

  “Nope, this one’s on me,” I said.

  “Give me that check.”

  “You got dinner for all of us Friday night. I’m getting lunch.”

  “But you got those drinks when I came into town,” he said.

  “Still means it’s my turn to pay. You can get the next one.”

  I paid the waitress, but Markus was hell-bent on leaving something. He dumped some cash onto the table on top of the tip I’d already left. I shook my head and held my arm out, waiting for him to make his way to the door. He kept stopping and talking to people like he’d known them for years, probably networking for his own business and trying to wrangle in new clients.

  I’d never stop learning from that man.

  “Pick up any new clients?” I asked as we headed out the door.

  “Two potentials, yep. Set up some meetings with them.”

  “You’re relentless,” I said.

  “And what have I always told you, Jimmy? A businessman isn’t a career—”

  “It’s a way of life,” I said.

  Chapter 10

  Ashley

  I was glad Jimmy didn’t invite me back to his place after lunch on Sunday. That meant I could get to the office early the next morning to start my investigation. Since I had gone through all the balance sheets dating back to the beginning of the company, I could start digging into the information I had. It would make it ea
sier to approach Jimmy with all this if I already had it figured out. I had to know what was going on with his company. When I tallied up all the totals I had jotted in the margins, over twenty million dollars had been manipulated in some way over the years. Whether it was withdrawn, added without notation, or reallocated in terms of stocks, that was a lot of money being played around with.

  And I needed something to take to Jimmy before I approached him with it.

  I was worried about being the bearer of bad news, but I figured he would accept it well from me. Our personal relationship was good, but our working relationship was even better. He could handle it from me. Then, he’d have the reassurance that I would be there to help him every step of the way. That was the best way to approach this, given the hit he took last weekend in the media, so that was the decision I’d made.

  My first stop in my investigation, however, was to the technology level of Big Steps.

  I wanted to ask them how many times over the twelve-year duration of the company they had upgraded the systems we all used. And just as I figured, the systems had been upgraded many times. The guys in the department gave me access to the equations used in the Excel program for our balance sheets, so I did my due diligence. I double- and triple-checked the equations to make sure they were correct and had someone help me dig into other areas I thought could be wrong, possibly skewing the numbers like I saw them to be skewed.

  But no matter where I looked, nothing was wrong with the program we were using for the balance sheets.

  Then, I asked them how many times they upgraded the hardware, the actual machines our programs ran on. Apparently, they had only been upgraded once, six years ago, in fact. And the reason for their upgrade was that the company had taken on so many clients, the hardware could no longer keep up with the software requirements the technology department needed. I asked to see the original order form if they still had it, and I saw on the sheet where both Jimmy and Ross had signed off on it.

  So, nothing was wrong with the technology behind the balance sheets.

  I thanked them for their time and went back to my office. The only other conclusion I had was that someone was manipulating the money, and we weren't catching it. I kept looking through all the accounts associated with the toggled currency, and I couldn't seem to find a trace of anything. The account numbers were solid, and no nameless accounts had been created. There were no ghost accounts or ones that had been shut down out of nowhere, but there was a set of initials that kept popping up from time to time.

  L.R.

  The initials weren't attached to the creation of any accounts, but they were attached to the deposits and withdrawals that had been manipulated over the course of time. For every transaction recorded in Big Steps, there had to be an identification number and a username submitted to process the transaction. The problem was, I didn’t recognize the initials, and that was even more unusual because I’d become very familiar with all of them during my time in accounting.

  A username was never a simple pair of initials. It was usually a first name, a middle initial, and a last name or some sort of combination that could easily point back to the person who initiated the transaction. It was to help follow where money was allocated throughout the company. There were certain accountants who dealt with specific budgets for the other departments in the company. It was usually easy to determine where withdrawals and deposits were coming from based on the username handling the transaction.

  However, I didn't know who these initials belonged to. I couldn't recall any time in the four years I had been with Big Steps that anyone had used “L.R.” as their username. Maybe it meant left-right? Not a username but a set of buttons that had been touched in order to initiate the transaction? Or maybe it was someone who used to work at the company and still had access to things?

  All I knew was the initials were attached to every transaction that had been mishandled, and those initials went all the way back to the inception of the company.

  Well, it sort of went back to start of the company.

  The first three years of the balance sheets didn't have the initials L.R. on them. There were still mishandled transactions, but the username portion of the transaction information was simply blank, which wasn't odd necessarily. The company was in its infancy, and the software was new. People probably assumed it was Jimmy trying to do something or Ross trying to familiarize himself with how everything worked, but I knew better than that.

  I pulled up a log of all past and present company employees on my computer and jotted down everyone with those initials. Then, I went back through and jotted down everyone who had the initials “R.L.” Just to be sure. But none of those people made any sense. One of them had worked in Human Resources for two years, another one had been a personal assistant to Ross for six months, and the other one was the four-year-old daughter of someone who worked in the IT department.

  There was, however, a nagging sensation in the back of my mind.

  When Nina had caught us kissing in Jimmy's office a couple of weeks ago, she made an explicit statement that he would pay for what he’d done to her. She stormed out in a huff, and Jimmy tried to settle me down, but I knew she was a woman who would make good on her word. The initials didn't seem to line up with Nina, but I had problems shaking the idea it might’ve been her behind the discrepancies. I didn't know how those dots were going to fall into place or how those lines were going to connect those dots, but something in the pit of my gut was tugging me in that direction.

  And that wasn’t good.

  The company was finally getting over the fiasco with Jimmy's social media. His Public Relations department was still trying to get his reputation in a decent place. His lawyers still didn't know who made the threat or where it had come from. What we all knew was that it had caused so much turmoil and distress, the public was now in an uproar. The lawyers were working as fast as they could so Jimmy could make good on his word and seem confident to the public, but the further they dug into the accusation, the more lost they became.

  Kind of like I was with these balance sheets.

  All I knew was that I needed more time than what I spent in the office. I needed more time to dig into this without the possibility of Jimmy hovering over my shoulder. Whether this was tied to Nina or not.

  So I stuffed the balance sheets into my bag and headed for his office.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Good morning, Ashley. What can I do for you?”

  “Would it be possible for me to have the day off?” I asked.

  “Has something happened with your mother again?”

  I didn’t want to lie. I didn’t have to have to look him in the face and lie to him about what was happening, but this was my responsibility. At least it had been when Mr. Brent threw those balance sheets back down on my desk. That was the first stop I needed to make. I needed to ask that man why he felt the need to pass these things off to me even though I’d been promoted.

  “I wanted to go see her, yes. The nursing home called, and she’s a little disoriented. Ornery. They’re hoping I can calm her down before they medically intervene.”

  “Then what are you still doing here? I’ll come with you,” Jimmy said.

  “If it’s okay with you, I think I need to do this on my own. If she doesn't remember you, it might only agitate her more. Sometimes, having me there during these spells makes things worse, but sometimes, it makes it better. If she doesn’t even remember meeting you ...”

  “It’s okay. Whatever you need. Take the day and let me know how she’s doing, okay? Promise?”

  I felt my stomach fall to my toes as I looked into his eyes full of sympathy and understanding and a desire to help. I felt terrible. I felt like I was hiding something from him, but with his reputation on the mend and his hunt for his accuser still taking place, the last thing I wanted to do was flood his world with more stuff to worry about.

  I could take care of this on my own. After all, my initiative is what got me this
job.

  “I promise,” I said. “I’ll call you soon.”

  Chapter 11

  Jimmy

  My Tuesday morning was filled with a massive investors meeting. Everyone wanted to meet to see how things were going to go this next quarter, especially with the hit the company’s image was taking in the press. I had to reassure them that their money was going to see profit and that they were not only investing in a strong company but also a strong man. I still had my wedding ring on to communicate commitment, and I had Ashley in the corner ready to rock and roll with numbers.

  But what really gave me a piece of mind was Markus.

  He would be the one to get them all back on track.

  The meeting went smoothly, and Ashley did a fantastic job. She fielded all their questions and ran calculations in her head on the spot. She really was a force to be reckoned with, and Markus kept shooting me looks. I knew those looks.

  They were looks of pride and envy, all rolled into one.

  “That was a hell of a parlor trick Ashley pulled.”

  Markus shut the door behind him as we walked into my office.

  “I’m telling you, she’s my new secret weapon,” I said.

  “Was she really doing all of that on the spot?” he asked.

  “She was. And she speed-reads. She devoured the entire US tax code in a few days. Saved me millions this year.”

  “She up for hire?” he asked.

  “Not a fucking chance,” I said with a grin. “I’m glad you were at that meeting today, though. I wasn't sure how it was going to go.”

  “I wasn’t sure either. Figured I’d finally drop by to one of those things, but you handled yourself well. You were direct and to the point and honest with your answers, even if the answer wasn’t what they wanted.”

  “I still don’t know what’s taking my lawyers so long to find this.”

  “For all you know, it was some asshole on the internet being stupid and making a joke that spun out of control. That’s the problem with all this technology. It links us, but it gives idiots a platform to spew stupid shit all the time,” he said.

  “Well, I’m making good on my word. When my lawyers figure out who did this, I’ll be serving them with papers.”