He Used My Salary to Fund Her Luxury Life? Oops I Just Dropped the Audit on His Head novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Twenty Grand
At a client dinner Nadine is told to prepay twenty thousand dollars and has three hundred and twelve, while payroll says she makes forty-one thousand a month. The deposit change came from her own login on her first day.
At ten to six, in front of nine coworkers and a waiter, my boss told me to put twenty thousand dollars on my card.
We were standing at the door of the private dining room at our steakhouse.
Tonight was the dinner for the biggest client I had ever closed.
The client's team was due at six-thirty.
The restaurant manager held out the card machine with both hands.
"The deposit has to clear before we seat the table," she said. "It comes off the bill tonight."
I looked at Thane Rayburn.
He was our chief revenue officer and had been my boss for six years.
"My card is maxed on the client gifts," he said. "You front it, Nadine, and finance pays you back Friday."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
I opened my banking app and turned the screen toward him.
"I have three hundred and twelve dollars."
His face went cold.
"Nadine." He kept his voice low, which was worse. "You made forty-one thousand dollars last month. Do not lie to me about this tonight."
Nobody moved.
Then my coworker by the coat rack laughed once, short and unkind.
"Must be nice," he said.
The manager lowered the card machine and looked at the floor.
Nine people stared at me, and not one of them believed me.
"Thane, I make about eight thousand a month," I said.
"Trevor says the rest of my pay sits in a deferred plan that vests in a few years."
"Who is Trevor?"
"My husband. He's a financial planner. He handles our money and sends me twenty-five hundred a month to spend."
Thane stared at me.
"Lanternfield has no deferred plan," he said. "We never had one."
The room had gone so quiet that I could hear the ice machine in the bar.
He took the tablet from the host stand and pulled up payroll.
He turned it around so I could see.
Net pay, forty-one thousand three hundred dollars, on the first of every month.
Deposited to Great Lakes Savings, account ending 4471.
It went back six years, to my first paycheck as a coordinator, and it grew every year since.
My account at Great Lakes Savings ends in 0918.
"That is not my account," I said.
"It's in your name."
"Then somebody opened it in my name."
Thane looked at me for a long moment.
"Prove it," he said. "Call them now."
My hands were not steady, but I did it.
I put the bank on speaker so the whole room would have to hear, because the whole room had already decided what I was.
A woman in the fraud department took my name and my social security number.
Then she read me my own account.
"Ms. Prewitt, account 4471 was opened six years ago at our Westerville branch."
"The mailing address is 31 Marlowe Tower, downtown."
I have never lived downtown.
"There is a second signer, added in March," she said. "A C. Ainsworth."
"I don't know a C. Ainsworth."
"The balance is four thousand one hundred and eighteen dollars."
"Where did the rest go?"
"This month's charges include Daubigny Jewelers and a hotel in Paris."
I had never been to Paris.
Someone behind me whispered, "She's good."
I texted Trevor with my thumb shaking: Did you ever change where my paycheck goes?
His answer came back before I could lower the phone.
Babe, don't call the bank. Don't make a scene. I'll fix it tonight. Love you.
I read it twice.
I had not told him I was calling anyone.
Thane read it over my shoulder.
"He told you not to call the bank," he said. "Before you called."
"I never said I would."
"Then how does he know?"
I had no answer for him.
My coworker by the coat rack stopped smiling.
I put the phone face down against my leg and made one decision.
"Open an audit on my pay," I said to Thane. "Every record with my name on it, from my first day."
"An audit goes to the board."
"Then send it to the board."
"And until it clears, you are off the Marwick account."
"You can't take the account tonight. I spent eight months on it."
"I can, and I just did."
He said it flatly, in front of the whole team.
I stood there and let him.
Then I looked at him, and for the first time since I had walked in, he did not look sure.
He opened the payroll log and scrolled to the first week of my first year.
His mouth went flat.
"The change of deposit account was submitted through your own login," he said. "On your first day, from your own computer, with your own signature on the form."
He turned the tablet to show me.
It was my name, in my handwriting.
I had never seen that form in my life.
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