My role?
My only role was to be the accountant in charge of his criminal clients.
“You will no longer come to this office,” he stated, steamrolling right over the confusion that washed over me. “You will no longer go home to your apartment. As soon as a representative of my client arrives, you will leave with them.”
I blinked again. And then some more. I wasn’t sure what moving my eyelids would do to make this make sense, but I wasn’t even thinking now. I was reacting, running on instincts to process this.
“I will go… with your client?” The words came out shaky. Like I was testing out a foreign dialect.
“You will go with them. That’s what I just fucking said.”
“To work for them directly?” I asked.
He grunted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. You can tell yourself that.”
A flicker of anger shot through me. “Why don’tyoutell me? Tell me what is going on.” Because of his thunderous expression at how I’d talked back, I cleared my throat and added, “Please.”
“There’s a situation that got a little out of hand. A miscalculation?—”
“Mymiscalculation?”
He growled at my interruption. “It doesn’t matter. Something didn’t line up as it should have, and now I’m stuck having to face off with a very angry representative from the Volkovs.”
Blood drained from my face. A weightlessness tugged me down and had me nearly panting. “Volkov?”
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Like anyone else in the area, I’d heard of them. The Russian Bratva was notorious for skirting the law, acting like the worst of criminals. Iftheywere one of the clients I’d been doing accounting work for, this was the first time I was learning of it. I never knew actual names. That was the whole point of it, covering up and hiding what and who was doing what with gross amounts of money.
“That’s what I fucking said,” he snapped. “You will go with the Volkovs when they arrive. As collateral damage.”
Now I reacted. I stepped back involuntarily as if he’d hit me.
“Collateral…” I started shaking my head before I could even determine the need to deny and reject what I was hearing. My body was clued into the danger, and I fought to understand and speak clearly. “No.”
“You don’t tellmeno, you fucking bitch.”
“No, Dad. You can’t?—”
I swallowed again, feeling like I’d just run a marathon with how dry my mouth was, how frantically my chest heaved for air, and how rapidly my heart thumped.
“You can’t bring me into this. If they’re upset about a discrepancy with their accounts, it’s not my fault.” Despite his malicious sneer, I carried on, rambling in panic. “I can’t understand how you would think to make such a decision. How can you—why would you—” I squeaked, almost hyperventilating. “How could you even think to bring me into this situation and think that I?—”
“Bring you into this?” he mocked. “You’ve been doctoring their books for fucking years.”
“I didn’t know that!”
He rolled his eyes.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything to deserve this… this…” I scrunched up my face. “Collateral? You intend to hand me over as some kind of, of, of, some kind of payment?”
“That’s exactly what I’m fucking doing.” He lifted his chin, as if daring me to argue.
“No. This can’t be happening.” I’d been stuck in the numbing hell of the same old, day in and out with no escape, but this wasn’t the sort of change I could’ve counted on. “I… No. I am not at fault. Those invoices and spreadsheets were accurate.”
“That’s what you can think.”
