"Well, if you're not in the mood to chat, then we could get down to business." He finishes the mug of coffee and sets it on the coffee table, then resumes his casual posture. This time, his hand splays on the cushion between us and I see no ring. My God, what the fuck is wrong with me? Now I’m noticing his marital status too? As if it means anything or changes anything for me.
"Good," I croak as I wrangle my thoughts back into alignment with my purpose. "What sort of shit do I have to do for you to get you off my back?" I sigh hastily and glance at the computer and notice his eyes track my movement.
"Well," he says, getting up. He crosses to the computer and waves me over, patting the seat before wiggling the mouse to wake the computer up. "Mr. Lombardi always did a fantastic job of managing my finances for me. Until recently, he was the only one I trusted.
"But he proved to me a few weeks ago that he was not who he said he was. Now I'm up against a deadline for end of year financials and I find he's not done my work since March. I have almost nine months of ledgers to straighten up, or maybe even create, and I have no one to do it. On top of that, the ledgers he does have are still missing."
Rafe's expression is hard as he looks up at me, and I slowly make my way over to the computer. "I am just a bank teller. I don't know how to do all of this stuff." I know that's only partly true. Given my high scores in my college classes and the fact that I'm almost done with my degree, I know more than I'm letting on, but I don't feel confident doing it. I have no real-world experience, anyway.
"It's not so difficult, now, is it?" He spins the chair around, and I plant my ass in it, then find that he manhandles it until I'm facing his computer, setting my coffee down.
"You need an analyst, not a basic teller." The numbers in columns on his screen seem jumbled. Maybe I'm just too tired, or maybe it's the stress of it all, but I'm no fool. This isn't child's play. This is literally the Mob's finances. If I fuck this up, they'll kill me. And if I want to walk away after I've seen all the bullshit they pull, they'll never let it happen.
In fact, just sitting here seeing this may put me in the wrong spot.
"I, uh…" I turn to stand up and Rafe plants his firm hand on my shoulder, pinning me down.
"Look at it, Riley. I need your help… Come on," he coaxes, "be a good girl." Rafe's hand slides across my shoulder, tucking my hair behind my back, and his finger snags in a tangle, inadvertently pulling a strand of hair. It forces my head back, sends a jolt of pain down my neck and back, and my God if I could control my body, that'd be nice.
My eyes stare up at his as he hovers over me with a sly grin. "I can't do this," I mutter, his finger still tangled in my hair while he looks down at me.
Any other day.
Any other circumstance, and I'd be begging him to fist my hair and tell me what a very good girl I am.
But this isn't the time or place for that sort of thing.
So why is my body pretending it's okay to turn to Jell-O?
"Try it," he says softly, and I watch those lips make every shape of every letter until he nudges my head forward and I'm staring at the screen. He clearly understands the sexual pull he holds over me because the smirk on that face, which I see in the reflection of his laptop screen, turns almost predatory as I take a deep breath and blow it out.
At first I don't even know what I'm looking at. I've never seen this software before, and the names of things aren't typical. It feels like the man who did this was old school, so much so that even the newer terminology I've been taught doesn't jive with simple functions. I try in vain to sift through the columns to make sense of it all, and it feels like my eyes will bug out.
"Problem?" Rafe asks, still leaning over me.
"I just… I need coffee, okay?" I rub my forehead and Rafe vanishes, and while he does, I spend the ninety seconds it takes hunting up a YouTube video on how to work the software, which is pure gold. By the time he sets the fresh, steaming mug next to me, I'm already whipping out the first statement.
I start sorting columns and numbers, forcing myself to breathe evenly while my mind tries to unravel whatever the hell Lombardi was doing. Half these entries look duplicated. Some are labeled with abbreviations I’ve never seen in my life. And the formulas—God. They look handwritten into the system by a blind man.
My palms grow damp as I try to follow one account that branches into a second and then a third, all with mismatched totals. It shouldn’t be this confusing. Even a sloppy analyst would leave a trail that made sense. This feels intentional, like a maze only the original creator could escape.
Rafe returns to the sofa, but he doesn’t sit. He stands behind me, arms folded, watching my cursor skim a row that refuses to add up. The chair creaks when I shift and lean back because the numbers won’t align no matter what I click.
“I can’t do this,” I say, trying to swallow the tightness rising in my throat. “This isn’t balancing. These entries don’t match any system I’ve been trained on.”
“Try harder.”
“I am trying.” My pulse quickens under his stare and I push away from the desk. “This is forensic accounting. These ledgers aren’t just neglected—they’re scrambled. If Lombardi did this on purpose, then even a real analyst would need weeks to reconstruct it. I don’t want to give you bad data and get myself killed.”
Rafe doesn’t respond. He reaches into his pocket, unlocks his phone with his thumb, and turns the screen toward me, and I see Lila standing outside her office building in a pale lavender coat. It appears she has no clue someone's even taking a picture of her.
My blood freezes. Every instinct screams at me to run.
Rafe lowers the phone to my eye level.
“Riley,” he says, voice steady, “you can do it. Or you can test me.”
I think I may throw up. He's not even kidding. This man is really going to hurt my family if I don't do this work for him, and I have no clue what I'm doing.
