Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(45)

I sat down with her at the table and motioned the waitress over. She brought me a Coke and a healthy pile of boneless wings which I greedily slathered in blue cheese as I ate.

“What’s this about?”

Brittany swallowed, hard. She put her hand on mine. I quickly pulled it away and gave her a look.

“It’s not like that. I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really scared. I found something I shouldn’t have.”

“Who are you, exactly?”

“I’m Mister Ross’s personal assistant,” she said, and swallowed, hard.

Oh, cute. My mother’s new husband has a ten-out-of-ten redhead personal assistant. I wonder if he introduced them at the company picnic?

Probably not.

Brittany drummed her fingernails on the cast iron. I chowed down.

“Spit it out,” I said, after a choking swallow of Coke. Shit, why did I order the extra hot sauce?

“I found evidence that your stepfather-“

“Martin,” I corrected.

“I found evidence that Martin is involved in some shady things. Do you know what a bust out is?”

I shook my head.

“It’s a kind of organized crime scheme. The criminals exploit a company by extending its line of credit until it goes bankrupt, then use the money the company borrowed to buy its own assets and resell them, then hand off the bad debt. An extortion scheme, basically.”

“Okay. So Martin is involved with this? He’s going to bust out Amsel?”

“No, I don’t think that’s even possible. The company is huge. Do you have any idea what your net worth is?”

“It’s my mother’s net worth until I graduate, and yes, I have a rough idea.”

“Lately the company has been underwriting a lot of mergers and acquisitions. Your father is in charge of them. He has a partner he’s working with.”

She opened her satchel and slid a folder across the table to me. I wiped hot sauce off my mouth with a napkin and spread the folder open, and sucked down soda to cool the burn. It didn’t help.

I read through the file.

“What am I looking at, exactly?”

“Amsel acquired this office supply company last year. Your step… uh, Martin has been channeling funds from the company into his private accounts. See these loans they’ve taken out?”

“Yeah. I’ve never heard of this bank before. That’s a lot of money.”

“I think they’re part of the Russian mob.”

I gave her an incredulous look and glanced down at the file again. “You’re kidding.”

“He’s been meeting a lot with somebody named Vitali. They went on a yacht cruise together about six months ago.”

“He has a yacht?”

“It belongs to this Vitali.”

“You have the dates?”

“Yes.”

I took a deep breath. “Why’d you come to me? Why not go to the police?”

“Russian. Mafia.”

“Right, but what am I supposed to do about this?”

“It’s your company. You have pull that I don’t. You can go places I don’t. I don’t have proof here, Mister Amsel. Not iron clad proof that will stand up in court and put these men away. If I go public with this, I’m dead. Martin scares me,” she started to choke up. “He’s… he’s not like other people. He’s hollow inside. Dead. I’m nothing to him. He goes through assistants like crazy. I’ve lasted longer than the last three combined. I should just quit, but this is hurting people. This office supply company has thousands of employees and they’re all going to lose their job when the company folds and Amsel sells off the assets. I need access to higher level files and accounts. Access you have. You’re not connected to any of this. You’re the only person I can trust.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

“This isn’t going to take a few hours, Mister Amsel. It’s going to take weeks, months even. We need to be very careful. We can’t tell anyone about this. Do you understand?”

“Yeah. So what now?”

“I’ll be in touch. I have to get back to the office before I’m missed. Look around and make sure nobody is following you.”

A few minutes after she left, as I was finishing my chicken, Eve called me.

I had to figure out what I was going to tell her. I wasn’t going to be telling her that I was working on sending her father to prison.





Chapter Fifteen





Victor





The company was a weird place to me. No matter how old I was, it was still “going to work with Dad” except there was no Dad to go with me. Everyone knew who I was, though, on sight. I wore a conservative dark suit and tie. The sleeves covered my tattoos. I’d designed them that way, to remain hidden in business attire. When I visited, it raised eyebrows. The Heir didn’t often stop by. Maybe once or twice a year. Since I was eighteen I’d been meeting semi-regularly with the management. Amsel is privately held, so no board of directors, only employees. These old men worked for me. I signed in at the front desk. Amsel occupied the top three floors of a center city highrise. The whole building belonged to me, but our offices took up only the three floors. For the most part, when Amsel invested in something, a publicly traded company did the actual work. Amsel itself was only what’s called a holding company, owning the stock and directing with a light touch.