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“That was a whole fucking minute ago!” I sucked in a lungful of smoke before I blew it away from his face. “Shit, will you just say yes already?”
“Are you serious?”
My chest constricted. “Yeah. Why? If you don’t want to, just say that. I know what this is, just sex and money, but—”
“Okay.”
I blinked at him. “Huh?”
“You deaf?” he asked, mocking me, using my accent and all before he grinned. “Yes, I want to go on a date with you.”
“For real?”
“For real,” he answered, leaning down until he placed a chaste kiss on my lips. “Where are we going?”
“I haven’t worked out all the details,” I said honestly.
“Okay. Oh, I can always cook for us.”
My stomach turned for entirely new reasons. “I ask to go on a date, and you decide you’d like to try poisoning me again?”
Ash slapped my stomach hard, making me grunt. “Asshole!”
“Yeah.” I grinned as I wrapped my arm back around him, and he settled against me once more. “But I’m your asshole.”
I pickedup a few papers and stacked them. Numbers jumped out at me as I glanced over one of the pages. Giancarlo was still on the phone. I had nothing else to do but watch him. Our date wasn’t until tonight, and I’d already cleaned the house. I was fairly certain if I distracted Giancarlo with sex again, Benito would personally stop by our house and drag him into the office.
Fuck that. I could be good and wait. I took the seat across from Giancarlo and laid out the papers I wanted to go over.A bit of math to pass the time. I blinked as a calculator was handed to me.
I took it and placed it to the side. Back when I’d been left at home for weeks on end, I learned that doing math was an easy way to distract myself from the overwhelming loneliness. I’d challenged myself countless times to do it all without a calculator. Sometimes it would take me days to solve a problem. Being abandoned was easy to ignore when I was knee-deep in a hard problem.
Things were different now. While I ran over every single number, I could still hear Giancarlo’s voice. It kept me grounded as I worked over them.
This isn’t right.
I did the calculations and came up with the same weird results. I did it again and again until I was certain I’d gone over every single number. Picking up a couple of sheets, I stood up.
Giancarlo looked up at me, phone pressed to his ear. “Wednesday will work around three; we can go over the floor plans then.”
I waited until he hung the phone up before talking. “Giancarlo, I found something.”
“What did the puppy find?” He slapped his knees, his deep voice going up an octave as he teased me.
Why me?Why in the hell did I gain the attention of someone like Gin? “You’re not all there, are you?” I tapped his forehead.
Gin laughed and moved my hand away. “What did you find?”
I laid the paperwork out before him. All four of the bank statements stood out the most to me.
“I calculated each of these, and there is about eighty thousand missing from them combined. The total down here adds up to the numbers you guys reported to the IRS last year. I pulled that sheet up, but once you go over the actual numbers and every statement, it doesn’t. Not to mention some numbers are inconsistent, almost like someone tried to make it look similar so no one would be the wiser.” I grabbed the other papers I’d gone over. “These are from the same year, but they add up correctly. Each one of these is from different times. It looks like money went missing every three to four months.”
“Are you sure?” Giancarlo asked. He stared intently at the papers I’d laid out for him.
My stomach tightened, and for a split second, I thought about backing down. “I’m sure.” I prepared myself for more questions. If need be, I’d break it down.
Giancarlo pushed back slightly. He yanked me onto his lap. My hands went up in the air as I tried to catch myself.
“Gin?”
