He Used My Salary to Fund Her Luxury Life? Oops I Just Dropped the Audit on His Head novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Eight Months of My Life

Thane pays the deposit himself and takes her off the client table, and Nadine emails the audit committee from the lobby. She follows her husband to Marlowe Tower, where the doorman says Ms. Ainsworth is expecting him.

The Marwick team arrived twenty minutes early, and Thane did not give me time to fall apart.

He saw their coats in the lobby and took the card machine from the manager's hand.

He pulled a second card from the back of his wallet, the personal one he never used for work, and paid the twenty thousand himself.

He did not look at me while he did it.

"Go home, Nadine," he said. "Marwick is not your table tonight."

"I built this table."

"And tonight it's mine."

My coworker from the coat rack slid into the seat I had picked for myself, next to the client's finance chief.

He said something to her and she laughed.

I picked up my bag and walked out through the dining room, past nine empty plates I had chosen the menu for.

Nobody said goodbye.

In the lobby I sat down on a bench by the fountain and opened my work email.

The head of the audit committee was a retired judge who sat on our board.

I had never spoken to her, but her address was in the company directory.

I wrote four sentences.

I said that my pay had been deposited into an account I did not own for six years.

I said the change had been made through my login without my knowledge.

I asked for a full audit of every payroll record under my name, and I asked that nobody who had touched them be told in advance.

I copied the entire executive list, because I did not trust anyone on it to forward it for me.

Then I pressed send, and my hand did not shake.

Behind me, a pair of shoes stopped on the marble.

"Pull it back," Thane said.

"No."

"You just copied the CFO and the general counsel on an accusation of payroll fraud, at six in the evening, from a bench."

"I copied everyone who had a chance to hide something."

He rubbed his forehead with two fingers.

His tie was loose and he had left the client at the table to come out here.

"I am not your enemy, Nadine," he said.

"You called me a liar in front of nine people."

"The payroll file said you were."

"And you believed a file over me."

He had no answer for that, and he did not pretend to.

"If this audit finds that you did it," he said slowly, "I will walk you out of this building myself."

"And if it finds that someone did it to me?"

His jaw moved.

"Then I will say so," he said, "in front of the same nine people."

"Every one of them."

"Every one."

I held out my hand.

He looked at it, and then he shook it.

His palm was warm and dry, and he let go first.

He went back inside.

I stood up and took a cab to the only address I had.

My phone buzzed before we reached the first light.

The audit chair had answered in under two minutes.

Received. The committee meets at seven tomorrow morning. Bring nothing and tell no one.

I read it twice and put the phone in my lap.

Marlowe Tower stood on the river downtown, forty stories of glass with a fountain in front.

Everyone going in wore clothes that cost more than my car.

A doorman in a grey coat stopped me at the revolving door.

"Residents and guests only, miss."

"I'm visiting thirty-one."

"Thirty-one has two units. Which one?"

I did not know.

I stepped back and sat on a stone ledge by the fountain with my bag in my lap.

I texted Trevor again: Where are you right now?

He did not answer.

At seven-fifteen a silver Audi turned into the circle drive.

I knew the dent in its rear bumper.

I had put it there myself, backing out of a grocery store, and Trevor had laughed and kissed me and said it added character.

My husband got out.

He had on the green quarter-zip I gave him for his birthday.

He opened the back door and lifted out a small black shopping bag with a gold ribbon.

Daubigny Jewelers.

He looked up at the tower and did not hesitate.

I stood in the dark beside the fountain, twenty feet from him, and he did not see me.

The doorman stepped out and swung the glass door wide with a smile.

"Evening, Mr. Dunleavy," he said. "Ms. Ainsworth is expecting you."

Trevor said thank you in his warm voice, the one he used on my aunt.

Then he walked in with the bag swinging from his fingers.

I followed him through the door.

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