Winter scowled at her. “For you, I’d charge more.”
“You presume I’d hire you.”
“If you could afford it.”
“Enough,” Niall grumbled, and both of them halted. “Save your bickering for the job.”
“How are we supposed to get to these ledgers?” Winter asked. “I’m guessing they’re not going to waltz us to them.”
“Eli’s daughter,” Niall answered. He swiped away the map and replaced it with a new photo of the same girl from earlier, a telescope-lens shot of her standing outside a shop in Paris, giggling with a few friends. “Penelope Morrison,” he said.
“Despite his unsavory reputation,” Sauda explained, “Penelope checks out from our analyses. She is uninvolved in his business and has as normal a life as a billionaire heiress can have. Eli seems to genuinely dote on her, perhaps partly out of grief over the death of his wife from a terminal illness some time ago.”
At that, Sydney looked away. “Monster has a heart?” she said coldly.
“So small you’ll miss it if you blink,” Sauda replied with a nod. “But heisgenuinely protective of his daughter, reluctant to get her mixed up with his dirty politics, and keeps her clean.”
“Penelope Morrison is the only person in the world that Eli trusts,” Niall added. “That means that if anyone can get us close enough to her father’s world to incriminate him, it’ll be her.”
“What good is she if she’s uninvolved in his businesses?” Sydney asked.
Sauda smiled. “Not entirely uninvolved.”
She brought up a third photo, this time of a young man with a narrow face and a scruff of beard, his eyes sharp and wary behind a pair of tinted glasses. “This is Connor Doherty, who reports directly to Eli Morrison. On the surface, he’s a young financial advisor who helps manage Penelope’s trust fund. In truth, he’s in charge of tracking Eli’s dirty money and cleaning it up. He ensures payments come on time and in the correct amounts, and then are moved into banks as legitimate money, without leaving a trail.”
“Penelope has had some tension with her father lately,” Niall added. “We think it has to do with how suffocatingly close Eli guards her. So, part of her quiet rebellion against her father is a secret affair she’s been carrying on with Connor, someone whom she seems to have had a crush on for some time.”
Sydney let out a low whistle. “Scandalous romance in the House of Morrison. I like this girl.”
“Connor is a mysterious figure for us, and almost impossible to getnear. We rarely see him photographed at any of Eli’s business meetings or events. Even Eli’s other associates don’t know him well, and he’s quite intentional about keeping them at arm’s length. But because of his management of Penelope’s funds—and their affair—he can occasionally be found with her. He’ll definitely be in attendance at her party.”
“What’s she like?” Sydney asked.
“We don’t know much.” Sauda nodded at Winter. “But we do know one interest she has.”
“Painting?” Winter suggested wryly.
“Bad taste in music?” Sydney answered.
Winter felt heat creeping up his face and opened his mouth to argue.
Sauda frowned at Sydney, who just held her hands up in mock innocence. Then the woman turned her attention back to Winter. “Winter, Penelope has attended over half of the concerts you’ve put on in the last two years. She has been in the audience during some of your interviews, has bought two of your old stage outfits from charity auctions—each of them at price points over two hundred thousand dollars, and she even met you once at a VIP backstage event for a handful of your fans. You probably don’t remember her—she’s quite shy and keeps a low profile.”
He swallowed, his mind automatically flipping back through the hundreds of meet and greets he’d done before, trying to remember her face. “True fan,” he murmured.
Sauda nodded. “I suspect that you’re a bit of an escape for her, and the oppressive world her father has built around her. Now, like Eli, Connor Doherty is a possessive man. He cherishes the beautiful things he owns, and one of those beautiful things at the moment is Penelope. He’s quite aware of her overwhelming fondness for you, though, and I imagine it won’t be hard for him to be lured out if Penelope is hanging on your arm throughout her party.”
The danger of this setup sent a shiver down Winter’s spine. “You want me to seduce her?”
Sauda shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to us. Be a flirt, be a confidant, be whatever you need to be. Walk the line of making Connor just jealous enough to want to get to know you, and not so much that he shuts you out.”
Winter’s attention shifted back to the photo of Connor Doherty hovering beside Penelope’s. If there was anything he was good at outside of music and performance, it was knowing just how much charm he needed to dial up in order to get the specific results he wanted. He’d just never expected to use it for espionage.
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered. “Piece of cake.”
Sauda nodded. “Excellent. If we can get close enough to plant something on Connor, I believe Sydney can steal the evidence we need.”
“Not to criticize any part of this,” Sydney interjected, “but I have serious doubts about whether or not Winter can maintain our cover.”
