Page 60 of Bullet
“Okay,” I said. “I get how this looks, but I didn’t do that. First of all, it’s sloppy. Second of all, you would have realized it before now, Squared. You saw the books every week.”
“Yeah, but I trusted what you told me, that everything was lining up the way it needed to.”
“And you didn’t want to cut the check until the end of the year,” Seth added. “Right as all the numbers would be rolling over and it would be easy to take more without anyone noticing. We cut the check for the expansion and I reported these earnings. We’re now short fifty grand that we needed to cover bills and payroll.”
“I’m not stealing money from the club,” I spat.
“Show me your bank account,” Nick said.
My heart stopped. “What?”
“Right now. Show me your bank account on your phone. You wouldn’t have fifty grand in there.”
Fuck.
Now I was realizing that it wasn’t just some random, shit luck. Someone set me up. “Okay… Idohave fifty grand in my account right now, but it’s not money from the club. It’s what’s left of my settlement from the accident.”
Nick crossed his arms. “The settlement fromyearsago?”
My skin was boiling with anger. I couldn’t blame Nick for the conclusion he was coming to, outside of being angry that he would honestly believe that I’d do anything like that. “Yeah. I’ve been saving it because I’m searching for my missing younger sibling.”
“You’ve never mentioned a brother or sister before,” Nick remarked.
“Yeah, because I don’t like talking about it here,” I said back. “Nicky. You know me. You know I wouldneversteal from you. This club means more to me than anything. I’m taking my job seriously,andI would never be that messy!”
“So, I should believe it’s not you because you got caught and you would never get caught?” he asked.
“No…” I let my head fall back. “Nicky—”
“Oh, fuck…” Seth murmured. “Shit, Harry…”
“What?” Nick and I said at the same time.
“I didn’t see this at first, but this number was changed recently. I wrote a copy of these vendor numbers and I wrote an eight here and not a three. Someone had to have changed it yesterday while you and I were writing the check.”
“While we were writing it? How do you know?” I asked.
“Because I wrote the vendor numbers right before you walked in, and we were together the whole time. You couldn’t have changed the number, and after I cut the check, I closed up the books, maybe five minutes after you left.”
But that would mean…
Nick looked over at Seth for a second and then flung his arm out and punched him square across the jaw. Seth fell backward out of his chair and crumpled onto the ground.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Nick snapped. “You told me he stole it! I just fucking accused him of stealing fifty thousand dollars!”
“I’m sorry!” Seth yelped. “I really thought he did!”
“Fuck!” Nick screamed and then looked across at me. “Harry, I’m…”
I held my hand up. “No, don’t apologize to me. At the end of the day, this is still my fault.”
The scene played over in my head. Celia and I walked in and then Seth and I completely turned our backs to her while we discussed the check. I made sure to have us step away from her so that it wasn’t like she could listen to what we were saying, and then I went and sat right back down at the books as I wrote the check out, without looking to make sure that Seth’s math was all correct. No wonder Celia suddenly wanted to go home last night after the time we’d had together. No wonder why I hadn’t gotten a call or text from her yet that morning.
She stole fifty grand and did so in a way that made it look like it was me.
To say I was crushed would be an understatement. If she had come back to my house with me, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I would have ended up telling her I loved her. Ididlove her. After Saturday with her roommate and Sunday with my dad and Marisha, I was so sure that she was the woman I wanted to be with, that I’d fallen for her.
How could she do this to me?
