Excerpt
This was his lifeblood,
damn it! Every member of staff was like
family and David, who had been around since his grandfather’s time, was more so
than most.
This was his lifeblood, damn it! Every member of staff was like family and David, who had been around since his grandfather’s time, was more so than most.
“Come in,” he ordered at the brisk knock on his door.
“Jared? I thought our meeting was scheduled for tomorrow at…” the older man’s voice trailed off as he realized that something was wrong.
“Don’t I pay you enough, David?” Jared asked without preamble, his voice deathly cold.
“Of course you do, Jared.”
“Then tell me, David, why did you feel the need to steal my money?”
“Jared, I apologize. I needed the funds urgently. I promise I was going to pay you back.”
“I don’t see how you would have paid the money back when you have spent the last two and a half months fiddling the accounts and showing less than full occupancy.” Jared took a deep breath and tried to rein in his anger. “Why didn’t you just come to me for a loan?”
The older man bowed his head and didn’t answer. If he had boldly written a cheque for himself and cashed it, Jared would have been annoyed that he had done so without his permission, but it would have seemed like a loan or an advance of salary. Instead the man had had set up a bogus company and had had one in every ten credit and debit card payments put through to it with a special card reader he had somehow managed to procure. The planning and the sophistication of the crime staggered Jared. It spoke of someone with a criminal mastermind, one whom he wasn’t sure he could trust to be around his operations.
“Not only are you fired,” he threatened. “I intend to prosecute you for every last penny!”
“Please, Jared, I have a daughter—”
“You should have thought of her before you stole my money,” Jared interrupted ruthlessly. But, then he queried, his brow creasing in puzzlement, “I thought you only had two young sons.”
“I have a daughter too. She’s a little older.”
“What does she have to do with this? Is she in trouble? On drugs? Did you steal my money to finance her habit?”
“No. No,” the man denied. “What I meant was that you and I could come to some arrangement.”
“What are you suggesting?” Jared didn’t think that the man was suggesting what he thought he was suggesting. No, no parent would do that to a child, would they?
“She’s as beautiful as my wife and still a virgin.”
Against his will Jared felt his pulse quicken. The man’s wife was a former Miss India and was still beautiful enough to stop conversation dead when she walked into a room. She was reed slender and tall, with fine, silky, softly-waving hair that reached past her bottom. David, though twenty-two years older, was a good looking man. Their child could be nothing but spectacular. Yet, something didn’t add up, unless…
“How old is she?” he demanded softly. If on top of thievery, the man thought he, Jared, was a defiler of underage girls, he would carry out the earlier threat of dismissal that he’d issued only as a warning.
“Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three and a virgin?” Jared tried hard not to laugh. Did he look like a fool? “I doubt that very much!”
“I promise you she is. She’s very shy.”
“How do you know she will be willing? I don’t want to feel like I’m raping any woman.”
Jared couldn’t believe that he was actually pursuing the ridiculous conversation, but suddenly he felt an urgent need to meet the paragon of virtue. He hadn’t been on the hunt for pussy in ages—rather pussy had hunted him—it would be exciting to stalk one that was trying to evade him. He wouldn’t seduce her if she was unwilling, but the thought of the chase and the eventual capture made the blood heat in his veins.
“She’s always been an obedient child,” the older man confidently assured him. “She will do whatever I ask.”
