Page 61 of Seduced By the Werewolves

I decide to head home, take a shower, and get ready like I normally would. It’s been too long since I was able to go on a run, and I wonder briefly if Mr. Bosley would even notice if I didn’t come in again today.

After getting fully ready for a normal day, I return to the office to find it empty. As I expected, my boss doesn’t come back.

I wonder what he’s doing to get his revenge on Beatrice. I have a feeling that he’s far, far deeper into something nasty than he wants to admit. I just hope that by extension, my shoes aren’t also covered in shit. I’ve done too many things over the last few weeks I surely shouldn’t have, and a shiver ripples across my skin at the idea I might have been a part of whatever scheme Mr. Bosley cooked up.

The invoices. The inventory. The fixed spreadsheets. Fuck.

I’m ahead on my work, so I decide to start an investigation. I need to know what Mr. Bosley’s been doing, and how I might now be caught up in it.

I spend most of the day looking through the files for whoever this Beatrice is. I flip through paper after paper, searching all over for her name. Surely, he must have some evidence somewhere about who this woman is.

Instead of finding the incriminating document I’m hoping for, I stumble across even more invoices. One in particular shows a huge shipment to one of our warehouses, and a name I don’t recognize as the warehouse manager, though I’m pretty sure that guy’s name is Doug.

Then, a little farther down, there’s yet another shipment. And another one.

I don’t know a lot about the business, but I’ve picked some things up during the years I’ve worked for Mr. Bosley. The biggest orders he ever makes are ten or twenty units. These show hundreds of units, delivered to an address I don’t recognize. All of them have been billed and paid for, even though the orders add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. I didn’t think Mr. Bosley had that sort of raw cash on him, and I know the business hasn’t been growing nearly fast enough to justify that.

What is he doing? Is he funneling money for her? Are these shipments even real?

My phone buzzes, and I look down to find it’s Leon.

Hey love, can I take you out to lunch?

I check my watch, and even though it’s about one o’clock, I don’t think Mr. Bosley is coming back. I desperately need a break from whatever is going on here, so I gratefully accept.

Sure. I’d like that.

Leon asks me to meet him at the food truck pod, and when I show up, he kisses me with surprising ferocity. When he puts me back down again, he points out all his favorite places to eat. It’s too far for me to get here from work and back on my usual lunch hour, so I’ve never tried it before. But today I doubt anyone will even notice I’m gone.

“So how’d you get the time off to go out with me?” Leon asks, sipping his drink and making a lot of noise doing it. It’s funny how the werewolf side of him still fully exists when he’s in his human form.

“Oh. Apparently, someone vandalized Mr. Bosley’s house.” I narrow my eyes and lean forward. “He thinks someone’s after him. First, he had me call the cops, then told me not to call the cops. He was furious. After that, he just left and didn’t come back.”

A strange look crosses Leon’s face—almost like he’s not surprised to learn this information.

“Leon?” I ask, a nervous tone to my voice. “What do you know about this?”

When he turns away and rubs the back of his head, I know something’s wrong. What has he done?

“Leon,” I repeat. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“It wasn’t me,” he says at last, still not making eye contact. “It was Eli. He was gone last night. Took the truck and just left. When he came back, he was covered in dirt. We grilled him, and he confessed that he went wolf at your boss’s house and, uh, trashed it.”

My hand flies to my mouth. Fuck. “Eli did this?” I repeat, still not sure I understood him properly. The realization crashes over me that Eli has just set off a potentially terrible chain of events. “Mr. Bosley thinks that the scary lady is after him, that it was some kind of message from her. He said he was going to stand up to the ‘bullies,’ whoever they are.”

Leon’s eyes go wide. “Wait, what? Some scary lady is after your boss?”

I nod quickly. “There’s been a car following me, too. I think it’s related. It happened the night that Mr. Bosley asked me to—” I stop myself. I can’t possibly tell Leon what he asked me to do—and what I did.

“He asked you to do what, Tiff?” He’s stern now. “Are you involved in this somehow?”

A whimper comes out of me against my will. “I think I might be. He had me ‘fix’ the books. He also had me sign for some big orders, which I never do. And then today I found these receipts that didn’t make any sense. Hundreds of units delivered to the warehouse, but I saw no evidence that they ever showed up.”

I collapse to the table, realizing just how epic of a fuckup that was. Beatrice must have known, somehow, that I’d been pulled into his lie, and now she’s keeping tabs on me, too.

“Money laundering.” Leon has a look on his face like he could kill. “Your boss pulled you into his money laundering scheme.”

Money laundering. So much more makes sense now. Oh, shit. I can’t believe I fell for it, that I let Mr. Bosley bully me into becoming a part of this.

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