“Have you gone through it?” I asked, flipping open the file. Rows of numbers glared back. Fucking numbers. I gestured sharply toward the door. “Close it.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The word shot straight through me. My cock twitched. Damn it to hell.
She turned on her heel and started out the door.
“Ms. Rhodes.” I cleared my throat.
She paused, her brow lifting slightly.
“Shut the door and have a seat.”
“Oh.” She looked between Ethan and me before she complied.
“What did you find?”
“I’m an analyst, not an accountant,” she said softly but with that quiet confidence of hers that had become impossible to ignore.
Ethan smirked across from me. He wasn’t subtle about enjoying the show.
Mira sat in the chair, back straight, hands folded in her lap. Every part of her posture was professional, but I didn’t miss the way her fingers itched to play with something to help calm her nerves.
I flipped through page after page of columns, debits, transfers. “Not an accountant?” I asked, glancing up just as a loose strand of hair slipped free from her bun.
“No, Sir,” she said with a small huff. “But I’m not stupid. I can read patterns. The numbers don’t match up. Someone’s moving assets off the books.”
That caught my attention as I scanned the highlighted numbers on the last few pages.
“And you’re certain?”
She nodded. “Eighty-percent probability, based on what I could verify.”
Ethan let out a low whistle, shaking his head. “That’s bad. How much are we talking?”
Mira glanced at him, then back at me. “Individually, the transfers are small—thirty thousand here, fifty there. But the pattern is consistent. Same shell vendors, same routing structure. If it continues at this pace, you’re looking at close to two million siphoned out by year’s end.”
Ethan exhaled sharply, half laugh, half panic. “Christ.”
I didn’t look at him. My focus stayed locked on her.
It shouldn’t have been this hard to concentrate. Not after everything I’d done to compartmentalize. But all I could think about was Saturday night—how she’d melted into me when I held her, the way she’d trembled while I rubbed her back and helped her sip the water I held up to her lips.
I’d hated handing the rest of her aftercare off to Vivienne’s girls, but keeping the blindfold on had been the right call. The only call.
Working side-by-side with her this week had been hell. No wonder I’d barricaded myself in my office.
“How long has it been happening?” I asked.
“Six months, maybe more. Whoever’s behind it knows the audit schedules. Every transfer happens just before a quarterly reconciliation, then disappears into the standard expense flow.”
She hesitated. “They know our system. They know you.”
I closed the folder slowly, leaning back in my chair. “Do you have names?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
She’d spent a good part of the week looking for stuff out of the ordinary.
