Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(47)

“Show me.”

“Okay,” she took a deep breath. “Amsel acquired this office supply company last year. Paperclips.”

“They make Paperclips?”

“No, that’s the name of the company. Paperclips.”

“That’s not a very good name.”

She sighed. “This is serious, Victor. Here’s the kicker,” she slipped me a page. “When Amsel acquired a controlling interest in Paperclips, the company was deep in the hole. They were a quarter billion in debt. Amsel propped up the company on the standard terms, requiring a reorganization and so on. They started to turn a profit. Then this happens.”

She slid me another paper. I picked it up and skimmed it.

“The company bought bonds,” I said.

“Right. When you buy bonds, you’re basically loaning money. The bond is like a bank note. You turn it in when it matures, get paid back with interest.”

“Okay. So?”

“So, Amsel’s holdings don’t buy bonds. They pay a dividend on stock back to the company itself. To you, basically. They don’t lend money out. The company started taking on debt of its own and loaning it back out on these bonds. So I looked into where the bonds were coming from.”

She handed me a list. I took it in both hands and skimmed it.

“I’ve never heard of any of these companies.”

“Right, and you wouldn’t. They don’t exist. They all claim to be chartered in Russia, but none of them are real. I checked. The money is just disappearing up its own ass. Pardon my French.”

“Okay then. Now what?”

“Now Paperclips is being shuttered. The company is going into bankruptcy. Amsel owns stock, they… you don’t actually own the company, so you’re basically a creditor. Shielded from the debt. I learned about this two weeks ago when an investigator from the securities and exchange commission showed up. Now, look at this.”

She had more paperwork. I read it, but it was just some stock trades. Very good stock trades. Martin made me quite a bit of money on them, even if he was putting me on the hook for fake debt to Russian shell companies.

“What am I looking at?”

“You’ve been insider trading,” she said, sighing.

“I’ve been what?”

“Legally, it’s you. Martin manages the account, obviously, so he’s on the hook. Someone has been passing him a lot of information. Corporate espionage stuff, mostly, but he got Amsel into the market before a couple of important pharmaceutical industry bills passed. Netted the company hundreds of millions, and a nice commission for himself. The management agreed to give him a sizeable bonus out of the returns. Most of it went to you, of course.”

Brittany took the papers and neatly stacked them up.

“What you see here is an orgy of evidence. There’s enough stuff here to send Martin to prison for the rest of his life, and the SEC does not, pardon my French, f*ck around.”

I nodded slowly.

Gotcha.

“Why didn’t you go to the authorities yourself?”

“Because of his associates. Martin has been talking to this Vitali person constantly. I don’t want end up in pieces in an oil drum somewhere, Mister Amsel. I need protection. Help from somebody who can protect me. Not witness protection or something like that. I don’t want to destroy my life.”

“Alright. So what do you need from me?”

“I need your access code. There’s some stuff I can’t get on my own. I was hoping we could go through that now, see what we can find.”

“Okay.”

“The interior vault. We need your code.”

My code in fact opened a second vault door, into a smaller room where even more sensitive material was kept. That first day I mostly sat at the reading table while Brittany went over what she found, making notes, explaining it to me. I had a basic grasp of most of it, and some required explanation. I was carrying a B-average in business with a human resources concentration. This math shit was mostly there to be someone else’s problem. Dad always used to say there was no better problem than someone else’s problem. He also taught me to listen to my gut and trust my experts, let them do their jobs and reserve the high level decisions for myself.

“There’s so much here,” she said. “We can’t finish today and I can’t take any of this out of here.”

“So, I come back. When?”

“Martin goes to meetings every Monday, so every Monday?”

“That works.”

She looked up from the papers. “Maybe we could go over this tonight. Over dinner.”

I sat up. “No. Miss Andrews, look, let’s keep this strictly professional. I have a…” I almost said fiancee, “I have a girlfriend. That’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean,” she brushed her hair back, “Um. Right. So…”

“See you Monday,” I said. “If we’re going to take that kind of time to keep doing this, I want you to keep an eye on what he’s doing right now. Anything you can put together to prove he’s dirty.”

“I can do that.”

“You have my cell number if you need anything. Don’t hesitate to call for help. Be careful.”