Page 2 of Emil

A little white lie never hurt anyone.

“I’m sorry to bother you with this, Anders. I just can’t seem to figure out why these numbers aren’t balancing. I’ve gone over every invoice. I’ve gone over the receipts. I’ve gone over miscellaneous expenses. Obviously, the money needs to be there. I just can’t figure out where the error is.” Lacey’s aggravation was apparent. I knew she had been working on this file for a few days now, and it still wasn’t untangled.

“You’re right though. Money doesn’t disappear, so it’s got to be in there somewhere. We just need to figure out where the mistake is. Is this the file that I was working on last week?”

“Yeah, but the documentation in there looks like it’s been modified. Did you go back in and make some changes?”

“No. I closed it out, and that was the end of it. It was modified?” I asked.

“Last Friday.” Lacey pointed to a line on the spreadsheet that clearly showed my login making alterations to the totals. I didn’t remember being in there, but I’d been so worn down lately that I supposed I might have been misremembering it.

This whole conversation was making my already pounding headache worse. After Rory left, I still hadn’t been able to eat anything. My stomach was in absolute knots. This mess with the files—which wasn’t the first I had found—wasn’t helping my stomach or head.

“Can you send this to me in a read-only format so I won’t accidentally change something again?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Great, thanks. I know you need it to finish the report, so I’ll work on it before I go home tonight.” I stood up from her desk, and immediately, the room began to spin. Out of instinct, I gripped the edge of her desk, trying to keep the world and myself upright.

“Oh my gosh, are you all right?” The concern in Lacey’s voice was kind, but John wouldn’t appreciate it if I made a fool of myself by fainting in the middle of the workday.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just stood up too fast. No biggie.”

After leaving Lacey’s desk, I made my way back over to mine. It was shoved in the back corner, surrounded by filing cabinets and boxes, but it was quiet and secluded, which I appreciated. With a groan, I collapsed into my chair and put my head down on my desk.

“Anders, what’s wrong?” The delicious-smelling cologne was back, and I was well and truly busted.

I swallowed my sigh and straightened myself up from the desk. No lies sprang into my mind fast enough to respond, and that left me, unfortunately, with the truth. Beyond that, lying to Emil Magnuson felt impossible because I knew he’d clock it immediately.

“I’ve just been feeling a little under the weather, that’s all. I’ll grab some pain medicine and water. It’ll be fine.”

“Do you need to go home?”

If I left midday, John would be livid. The string of text messages and voicemails that would be on my phone wouldn’t be worth it. Powering through the afternoon was a better option. He didn’t appreciate it when I looked weak in front of other people. He said it reflected poorly on him, and he was probably right. People might think I was getting away with something just because we lived together. I appreciated how he made sure I wasn’t given special treatment in the office.

“No thanks. Aspirin and some water will fix me right up.”

Mr. Magnuson nodded and stepped back from my desk. When I stood, I hoped it was slow enough to keep the dizziness at bay. It wasn’t, but I must’ve faked it well enough because he didn’t say anything else. However, I felt his eyes tracking me across the office floor on my way to the breakroom for water.

“Anders.” John’s voice rang across the room when I was about halfway there. The harshness caused me to flinch. I made the mistake of catching Lacey’s sympathetic gaze. Her grimace forced me to school my features and give a fake smile.

“End of the monthly reconciliation is making everyone grumpy,” I said brightly. Rather than continue on for water, I turned on my heel and went into John’s office. He was behind his desk, the files I’d organized for his morning scattered everywhere, with a spreading dark stain of coffee on a few of the papers.

“You needed me?”

“What I need is for shit to get done when I need it done.”

I furiously racked my brain, searching for the forgotten task. Mentally, I scrolled through my to-do list, trying to figure out what I’d missed, but I came up empty.

“I’m sorry for not handling what you asked. Can you tell me what it was?”

John looked at me like he’d never met anyone less competent. His eyes bore into my mine, and I hated the way I folded under his sneer. When John was like this, I didn’t feel useful or good. If I wasn’t good enough, what was the point of keeping me around?

“You were supposed to arrange a dinner with Magnuson so we could finalize this bullshit takeover. That asshole wanted my family company, and he fucking stole it. The least I could expect from you is to make a goddamn dinner reservation so we can salvage something from what my family built. Fucking useless.”

“John, I’m so sorry. How did I manage to forget something so important? Stupid.”

Panic rose from my gut into my chest. He needed me to take care of the details, and somewhere along the way, I’d failed him. The loss of control of his family’s company had crushed him, and I knew it. Anyone would be angry under the circumstances, so his anger was reasonable.