Page 84 of The Suit

“Thank you, dear, but no. Another time, and you can tell me how you solved your problem. Consider it your homework.” She gave me a wry smile, then walked off toward the car parked behind mine, got in and drove off without a second glance at me.

My stomach grumbled. The last thing I’d eaten was the hot dog Rafe had bought me at the game, and I suddenly realized how hungry I was.

Nine a.m.

It was time for breakfast and then the three-hour journey back to New York; and three hours was plenty enough for me to devise a plan which included me quitting my job and coming clean to Rafe about what I’d done.

I could only pray that he would listen - and forgive me.

I bent down at each of the stones, placing a kiss to them and not caring if anyone saw me.

“I promise not to leave it another ten years. I promise I’ll be back soon. I love you.”

I picked up my phone when I got back in the car and shot off a text replying to Rafe, suddenly desperate to see the man that two weeks ago I’d hoped to never see again.

16

Rafe

Holmes:Could I see you later? I’d like to talk, we should talk. I’d really like to see you.

Holmes:P.S.Thank you for the weekend and last night. Hope the rest of your evening was good.

Iwas still frowning as I parked the car and headed into the Bat Cave. While I was very much enjoying this new, slightly awkward version of Beulah, the‘we need to talk’text was never a good sign. Apparently. I wouldn’t know first-hand, but I’d heard it wasn’t.

Shewasright though, we did need to talk, because one way or another this week was going to change things even more than they already had.

I leaned back against the wall of the elevator, praying there were some painkillers somewhere in the building, if not, Cody would need to step away from the keyboard to get me some.

Fuck me, when parents were given a night off, they definitely made the most of it.

After Beulah had left and we’d finished drinking in the box, we’d made our way over to Nobu where Drew had reserved the private dining room. The second the sake bombs had arrived, Jupiter bailed for an early night, and I should have gone with him but I obviously wasn’t that intelligent. I was also too busy thinking about Beulah and mulling on Penn and Murray’s comments about falling for her.

Lust and love were two different ball games, and before this week, I’d have sworn blind I was clever enough to know the difference.

It had been a long time since I’d been in love with someone. This wasn’t that. My high school girlfriend had been sweet and kind, gentle and loving; the antithesis of Beulah. Though if I compared the two, they had both consumed every waking moment of mine. Except with Beulah, it was fire and fury, passion and hate. Although Iwasthinking about her naked a whole lot more, which always led to me thinking about the next time I’d get her naked and those noises she made, the way her eyes glazed over and her stomach convulsed right before she came, the taste of her sweat as I licked it off…

I groaned, shifting my now hard dick in my pants before things got really uncomfortable.

“Boss man!”

I walked out of the elevator to find Cody waiting, perched on the table opposite the elevator doors, his arms tightly crossed over his chest. There was a level of tiredness to him I’d not seen before; lilac shading contrasting with the bloodshot red of his eyes; ones that probably competed with the current state of mine if I cared to look in a mirror.

My frown deepened. “Why are you waiting for me? You never wait for me.”

He shifted his feet so they stretched out in front of him. “We have a problem.”

I stopped still. Fuck.

The ‘we have a problem’greeting was as bad as the‘we have to talk’text. What the fuck was in the Kool-Aid everyone had been drinking today? And why did it have to be on a day when my head was about to explode? No doubt that was also the reason my stomach began churning.

I sipped my coffee as I held his stare. The sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could lie down on my couch. “Okay, shoot.”

“So you know we found Dainty Lady, and I traced its ownership back to that one corporation listed in the Bahamas that had nothing else associated with it?”

I nodded slowly. On Wednesday morning, after I’d slept late following my exertions with Beulah, I’d got into the office and Cody was beside himself with more excitement than I’d ever witnessed from him, mostly because he’d found the yacht so quickly, but also because Diego owed him lunch for a week after he’d bet him he wouldn’t be able to find it before the weekend. I’d have probably got to the office sooner, but when I’d had a quick scan of my unread emails after Beulah had left, I hadn’t noticed his in the folder. The yacht was owned by a corporation called White, Inc. and then it had been a dead end. White, Inc. was owned by another corporation, which consisted only of a string of numbers, and no one was named in the trustee log.

“On Thursday night I tracked another account with a same amount of numbers in the name, and I showed it to the big guy and he noticed that the middle ten numbers were the same for the corresponding letters for Dainty Lady, only they’d been moved on three decimal places.” He looked at me eagerly and I nodded, trying to keep up with the speed at which he was talking. I’d got the gist though; he’d found more stuff.

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