Into the Fire (Bridge Book 2) (20 page)

“I want her back.” I swallowed hard, unable to tear my gaze from her. “I can get her back. I know I can.”

Ian sighed beside me. “Come on, man. You can win her back another night. Let’s go have some fun.”

Ian might have been drunk, but there was a measure of wisdom in his words. I’d gotten myself into this mess by being impulsive and reckless, and already I was entertaining visions of leveling anyone who was a threat.

My legs started moving under me as Ian led me toward our next stop.

“We’ll get some shots, find some pretty girls to keep us company, see if we can find someone to ease the pain, buddy. All will be well. I promise you.” He patted my chest.

I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted Vanessa. And if I couldn’t have her, I didn’t want to spend the night envisioning her with someone else. Who the fuck was that guy? How could someone have slipped into her world so quickly?

I glanced back. The way she smiled at him reminded me of the happiness we’d had together. When we weren’t tearing each other apart. When he took her by the hand, a fierce jealousy took over. I could barely harness it.

With clenched fists, I turned away. I had to before I did something I’d regret in the morning. I followed Ian into the loud bar. But no amount of hard liquor could dull the pain that lanced through me. She was my girl, and that smile was meant for me…

M
onday came fast
, and the days weren’t getting any easier. Despite being emotionally exhausted, I hadn’t slept well. The places where Darren’s mouth had marked me hadn’t faded much. I reached for anger, but tears and regret flooded me. If only I could do it all differently…maybe Darren wouldn’t have felt the need to push me out of his life.

He’d called a few times, but I couldn’t bring myself to hear his voice yet. Time wasn’t mending the wounds very well, but maybe he was right. Maybe we needed a break.

I kept remembering the angry way he talked about my relationship with Reilly. Frustration and jealousy seethed beneath the surface of our heated words to each other. He couldn’t really think that I was after anything more with Reilly. He had to know me better.

All day my thoughts ran on the same hamster wheel of questioning, doubts, and regret. One day, all of this wouldn’t hurt so damn bad.

Reilly barked at me for coffee so I brought him some, and on my way back, I noticed a fat manila folder on Adriana’s desk labeled
NYC Youth Arts Initiative
.

“Is Bill involved with them too?”

Adriana looked to where my hand rested on the folder. “Oh, yes. He’s been a patron for several years. The nonprofit has become an accredited investor in the fund though. Should be a great opportunity to help their endowments grow.”

I nodded. “Do you mind if I take a look through? I’m still trying to catch up on all these structures.”

“Sure. I’ll need it later this afternoon to take care of some of the paperwork. But go for it.”

“Thanks.”

I took the folder back to my desk and sifted through it. Reilly Donovan Capital was taking a healthy chunk of their investment—in excess of thirty percent, which didn’t match up with what we’d been selling at the investor cocktail. Why would he charge a nonprofit so much more…especially one he’d devoted so much time to?

I returned the file and went back to work, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I opened our shared file storage and did a search for the initiative. They hadn’t been set up as a client yet, but I found a folder with their name under Reilly’s protected account, one that I had access to as his admin.

I clicked through, looking for anything that might look out of the ordinary. Several invoices had been logged from another company, TriCorp, billing the initiative for an enormous list of services. Everything from consulting to accounting, all being billed at six hundred dollars an hour. The invoices went back at least eight years, and there were too many to count.

I’d never heard of TriCorp, but a quick search pulled it up. TriCorp was a New York corporation with two shareholders: David Reilly and Kevin Dermott. An older version of the incorporation documents listed only Kevin Dermott.

A sinking feeling crept over me. Something felt very wrong about this.

I opened my drawer. Jia’s card sat at the top of the stack that I’d collected from the investor party.

Reilly and Bill emerged from their offices. I slammed the drawer shut.

Reilly frowned. “We’re headed out to lunch.”

“Me too,” I said quickly. “I’ll see you when you get back. Call me if you need anything.”

He didn’t respond as he passed me by. As soon as he left, I picked up my phone and called Jia. She picked up after the first ring.

“Jia, this is Vanessa Hawkins with David Reilly’s office.”

“Vanessa. Good to hear from you.”

“I was wondering if you wanted to chat. About that thing we talked about,” I hedged. I glanced up to Adriana who seemed distracted with her own work. I didn’t suspect she was listening, but already I sensed that I was digging too deep and should proceed with caution.

“I’d love to. You free for lunch?”

“I am. Where do you want to meet?”

She cleared her throat. “How about someplace private?”

I thought for a moment. “Delaney’s on Pearl.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Look it up. I’ll meet you there in fifteen.”

When she hung up, I grabbed my purse and headed downstairs.

* * *

D
elaney’s was
as dark and dingy as I remembered. I’d met up with Maya here a few times for lunch when she needed to get away, far away, from the office. If Jia wanted privacy, this was the place. I sat at a small table in the back. A thick varnish covered the tabletop, but despite the half inch of protection, the surface was still scratched.

At the bar, an older woman with long gray hair sat beside a younger guy who seemed like he was already lit. He was hanging half off his stool and talking her ear off. Maybe Delaney’s didn’t host a very lively crowd during the lunch hour, but by Maya’s accounts, things could get rowdy at night.

The door to the bar opened, light pouring in behind the silhouette of a woman. As soon as the door closed, I recognized Jia’s face as she came toward me.

She situated herself across from me. The less than luxurious wood chair squeaked a bit as she sat. “You picked quite the place.”

“You said you wanted private.”

Before she could respond, the bartender arrived at the table with two paper menus. “Ladies, can I get ya anything to drink?”

“Perrier, please,” she said.

The man scrunched up his face slightly. “Eh, we’ve got beer, liquor, and tap water.”

“Tap water would be fine, thank you.” Jia held her tight flawless smile.

“Same, thanks,” I said. “And a hamburger.”

“Coming right up.” He scooped the menus and left us alone, returning less than a minute later with our waters.

“So what brings us to this fine establishment?” She shrugged off her blazer and leaned back in the chair.

“You said that if I ever wanted to know more about my boss, that we should talk.”

“So what do you want talk about?”

You tell me
. But I didn’t guess it would be that easy. I’d invited her here, and we were dancing around a potentially dangerous subject. I sensed that she held a grudge against both Dermott and Reilly. But I couldn’t get her to reveal anything damaging without making myself vulnerable too.

“I found some things. Can I speak to you in confidence? If I’m completely wrong about any of this, I don’t want to lose my job.”

“Reilly isn’t with the firm anymore, and between us, I have no loyalty to Dermott anymore. So the answer is yes. You can speak to me in confidence.” She rested her forearms on the table and leaned in.

“I want to know more about the Youth Arts Initiative. I’d only heard about it in passing since I’ve been with Reilly, but now the organization is investing with the hedge fund. I started looking closer, and Reilly’s financial involvement with them has been significant.”

“He’s a major donor and a member of the board. David and Cheryl Reilly have been dumping money into the organization for years and bringing all their friends with them.”

“Right, but the money is going the other way. A huge amount of money has been funneled into a third-party company that’s been charging them for all kinds of things. The paperwork goes back years. Reilly’s a shareholder, but the corporation was only in Dermott’s name until this year.”

“Good eye.” She grinned, and her eyes took on a satisfied glimmer.

“I’m not sure if it’s relevant, but I’m pretty sure he’s trying to get Cheryl off the board too. I overheard some conversations with other board members. He was campaigning pretty hard to get rid of her.”

She arched an eyebrow as if that part was news. “Cheryl’s whole life is that organization. She took it over and turned it into what it is. Reilly put in the money, but she made it happen.”

The bartender swung by with my hamburger, not bothering to ask me if I needed anything. Didn’t matter, I was starting to lose my appetite the more we talked about Reilly.

“Would he kick her off just out of spite? I thought they had parted amicably.”

Jia took a sip of her water and set the glass down. “Maybe he has something to hide. Or something to gain.”

I waited, but she didn’t continue. I sensed that she knew more than she was telling me.

“If something shady is going on, I need your help to know what to look for.”

“The question is, what do you want, Vanessa? This only works if we both get what we’re after.”

I stared at my hamburger and took a nibble on a fry. What
did
I want? I’d started digging with no idea what the consequences could be.

“I’ve dedicated my life to Reilly and to this job for two years. Every day, with very few exceptions. If he’s doing what I think he’s doing, I don’t want to be a part of it anymore. I mean, this is really wrong. Not to mention illegal.”

She stared at me a moment without saying a word. “About a week after Reilly’s divorce was final, Dermott transferred a large sum of money out of TriCorp into an offshore bank account.”

“How much money?”

She pursed her lips. “The transfer was in the amount of twenty million dollars.”

My jaw fell. I hadn’t had the time to look through all the invoices, but… “Oh my God. If what you’re saying is true, half the money that passed through TriCorp is technically Cheryl’s.”

“I can guarantee it wasn’t on the table in the divorce. So, yes, technically, it’s hers, or the organization’s. However you want to look at it, it’s in the wrong hands. Cheryl never knew about it because she’s always been on the ground floor of the organization’s operations. He’s been managing the finances at the top, setting up kickbacks for Dermott and Donovan and anyone else who he didn’t want talking about the millions he was skimming off. So while Cheryl’s tapping all her friends to keep donating to the cause, he’s skimming as much off as he can into an account that Dermott managed up until a couple of months ago. They’ve both been using the initiative as a tax shelter for years. The CFO at the initiative is in completely over his head. It’s a gold mine for everyone else.”

“This is horrible.”

I swallowed over the huge knot that had formed in my throat. Reilly was a monster, and suddenly I felt like the biggest fool for ever doubting my instincts.

“How do you know all this?”

Jia shrugged and stole a fry from my plate. “Dermott talks too much.”

“You haven’t known him very long.”

“I think I know him better than his wife does at this point.”

She winked, and even though I found her casual attitude toward his implied infidelity unsettling, it did explain why Dermott would confide all of this to her. It would also explain why she was so angry to have been passed over after Dermott’s promotion. She was indeed a woman scorned.

“So what do we do? I mean, this needs to stop. It’s fraud. So many people are getting ripped off.”

“Like you, I have a ton of paperwork showing money passed between him and the initiative. It looks shady and would cause a scandal, but at the end of the day, these are smart finance guys. Even if no one’s been paying attention, they probably aren’t going to cook the books to the point where they can’t loosely justify the expenses in a court of law. That’s not the smoking gun we’d need to really take them out of the game.”

“What is?”

“I can prove that Dermott wired the funds. But it doesn’t matter unless you can find where the money went.”

“And what if I find it?”

Her lips pursed slightly, and I could see the calculating in her eyes. “If you can find me that account’s records, Dermott and Reilly are both finished. I’d take it to the top of the firm, and I’d have Dermott’s job within a week.”

“You want revenge,” I said simply.

“I like to think of it as my own personal brand of justice.”

“What if you’re wrong? What if all of it’s legitimate? I lose my job over nothing.” Not that I wanted to keep it, in light of all of this.

“Go to Cheryl. If she thinks your heart is in the right place, she’ll never tell Reilly. Life goes on. And if I’m right, she’s got ten million reasons to believe you.”

“I’ll get blacklisted if Reilly knows I’m behind it.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I could probably get you a highly paid administrative position back at the firm. I could hire you directly under me, if you’d like.”

I appreciated that Jia was trying to sweeten the deal, since the future was looking bleak regardless of the outcome. But I couldn’t think of anything worse.

“No offense to you, but I don’t want to run around after overworked execs anymore. If I leave Reilly, I need to start over.”

“I’m not sure how I could help you there.”

I thought it over. The possibility of starting over had featured more prominently in my thoughts lately. Still, I wasn’t sure what my next steps would be. I had a couple years of solid work experience to add to my résumé and some savings to get me by for a while. “I’ll figure out a way to land on my feet.”

“Whatever you decide, just don’t let Reilly catch you snooping around. If he gets wind of any of this, he’ll move the money and start covering his tracks. Sounds like he may already be trying to do that by getting Cheryl off the board.”

“The meeting is at the end of the month.”

“Clock is ticking.” She slipped her blazer back on. “I’ll courier the wire transfer statement and anything else I can find to your apartment later tonight. That way you’ll have everything you need when the time comes.”