Page 63 of Bosshole
“Guys,” Zee murmured, her gaze bouncing between us, refocussing our attention on her. “I found something.”
I looked at her, really looked, and my gut sank. Tension was gathered around her eyes, and she was pale. I thought it had been the shock of our storming the yacht, but something more was going on.
I dropped to my knees in front of her and reached for her hands. She was cold, her fingers white, an unmistakeable tremble in them. “Talk to us,” I encouraged.
“There’s a pattern in the data.” She gestured to the five screens she had set up at her desk, one of which still had the security feed on it. She made to stand, and Ry was there, helping her up and guiding her over to the executive chair rolled halfway across the room.
She pursed her lips before explaining, “The amounts are the same, but the bank account numbers don’t match. There’s a discrepancy between who the money was paid to in the accounting records and where it was actually sent.” She shook her head and exhaled, bringing her feet up onto her chair. She folded herself in half, wrapping one arm around her shins and using her legs as a shield. “No one would have picked it up unless they double-checked every detail.”
“Which transactions?” Ez asked. “Are they the ones that the liquidator had connections to?”
Zee nodded and wiggled her mouse, and the darkened screens lit up. “Take a look.”
I moved to her side, crouching down as Ry did the same and Ezra moved in behind her.
The screens showed rows upon rows of what looked like spreadsheets, many of the lines highlighted in a different colour.
“The colours don’t mean anything. I’ve used them so that I can easily show where they match up,” she explained.
Even just eyeballing it, it was clear there was a pattern.
“Take this transaction, for example.” She pointed out one that was a turquoise colour. “It says in the accounting records that this was a deposit into one of the American companies that needed a bailout during the GFC. The funds would have been lost had they been paid into it, so no one was expecting the money back. But instead of being invested, it was paid here instead—different bank account number, different account name but exactly the same amount. Down to the cent.”
“So who got that money?” I asked, trying to follow the path she’d mapped across the screens—without success given that I had no idea who the bank account owner was.
She pointed to the next monitor over, one that had more spreadsheet information listed. Names and numbers were highlighted in different colours like on the other screens. “That particular recipient is a shell company based in Seychelles.”
Zee then moved her mouse to the fourth one, where she brought up a tab showing a corporate listing. “Each bank account owner where a suspect transaction has been deposited is a trustee, which for an investment firm isn’t out of the ordinary. But what’s not normal is that they’re all based in tax havens. They’re also not listed on any exchanges of any type, and they don’t appear to have fixed shares that you can buy into or be allocated. So far I also haven’t been able to find the documents that regulate the trusts and their shares either, which, again, isn’t normal for investment vehicles. But I haven’t looked at all of them yet.”
“What does all that tell you?” Ry asked.
“Nothing good.” She shook her head and sighed. “I have a theory. It’s speculation at this stage, but there are too many transactions like this for it to be a simple mistake.”
The tight lines around her eyes and her downturned lips had me reaching for her again, resting my hand on her bare thigh.
“Someone was embezzling funds.”
“How do we narrow that list down? It could be anyone who had access to the bank account.” Ezra asked, his resolve finally breaking as he reached for Zee and ran his fingers through her hair before massaging her shoulders. “What’s your theory?”
She groaned blissfully, leaning her head back against his belly. “That feels good.”
“I…. That’s good.” He closed his eyes as if having a battle with himself, but he kept moving his hands.
“So, yeah, theory.” She sucked in a breath, and her words tumbled out of her so fast that she spoke in one long sentence. “I think the company somehow got caught up in organized crime. The only explanation for how this was set up, how it all ended, how she went missing—everything—was that Mum found out and was trying to get the company out of it. But that didn’t suit someone—whoever it might have been—and they decided that ReimagINC had outlived its usefulness. They tied up the loose ends and got away with murder. Asher was collateral damage.”
Zee’s voice wobbled, and she fanned her hand in front of her face, blinking back tears. “They killed them,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
My chest ached, my throat tightening as I struggled to swallow past the lump in my throat. Unshed tears burned my eyes. I loved Asher like a big brother too, far more than my own siblings who seemed to enjoy forgetting that I was there as much as our parents had. We followed him and Ry around like puppies, trying to be half as cool as them. They were rockstars in our world.
But Asher was so much more than that to Zee. He was her hero. He’d wiped her tears when she was a baby. He’d shared his toys and held her hand when her dad cleaned her scraped knees. He’d crept into her bed and read her stories when Zee couldn’t sleep. They whispered their secrets to each other and never ratted each other out. He took his big-brother duties so seriously, being brave enough to pet the neighbourhood dogs first, despite being terrified of them, whenever Zee saw one she wanted to say hello to.
She was shattered when he’d died. Her entire world had been rocked to its core and tilted so far off its axis that Zee didn’t know which way was up.
Zee was strong, stronger than anyone I knew apart from her dad and Ry. But days like today when I watched on as she relived every ounce of pain, every grief-stricken moment, ripped my heart out, shredding it to pieces.
Seeing Ry go through the same was just as difficult.
When Ry’s dad died, he’d pulled back, retreating into himself. He was sullen and quiet with everyone except Asher. Ash was the only one who could bring Ry out of his shell and give him a sense of normalcy. They were kids together—they played computer games and took the little tinny out to go fishing or swimming in the Broadwater. They walked to and from school together and did their homework together every night. Ash reminded Ry every day with something far more significant than words—his actions—that he would never be alone. He became Ry’s whole world.