Kristin Hardy - Her Christmas Surprise

“She could lose the house? ” Lex stared across the smooth, polished ebony of the desk and into the eyes of Frank Burton, his parents’ longtime personal attorney.

“That can’t be possible.” Olivia spoke up from where she sat by Lex in a powder blue suit and pearls.

“You’re listed on the boards of five of the LLCs Bradley set up. The shell corporations, I mean, the ones he used to funnel the money away.” He glanced at the sheet before him. “Correction, five that they know of. They’re quite certain there are more.”

“But I don’t remember any of this,” Olivia said positively. “And I would have. I don’t just sign things without reading them, you know.”

“He wouldn’t have needed to have you sign, not if he had access to your social-security number and your passport. Did he?”

That stopped her. “I don’t know. He had access to my office. I suppose he could have found anything if he was looking for it.”

“At any rate, that’s only part of the trouble. The most damning fact is that he funneled money through your bank account. He deposited five million dollars on ten occasions over the past two years.” Burton held up a thick manila folder. “It’s all documented.”

Olivia stared. “Five million dollars?”

“Times ten. Fifty million, all told. The question is, why? Do you have something to show cause? A receipt, maybe? Records of business transactions? It’s important that we demonstrate the transfers were legit.”

“I didn’t… I don’t know anything about it,” she said helplessly.

Burton frowned at her over his glasses. “They were five million dollar deposits. Granted, the sums you receive from your quarterly dividends and real-estate holdings are as big, if not bigger, but still, where did you think it came from? And didn’t you wonder when it was transferred out?”

“A bank error?” she suggested.

Burton gave her a skeptical stare. “Ten times? Olivia, if you know something, now’s the time to tell us.”

“I don’t… I can’t…I—” She turned to Lex, a thread of desperation in her voice. “Your father always did our finances. You know how he was. When he passed away, I was just…” She firmed her lips. “There was so much to see to, the funeral arrangements, notifications, wills. Bradley offered to take care of things. It was a relief to hand it over to him. And then it just became habit,” she trailed off.

“You played right into his hands,” Burton said. “He used his access to launder money through your accounts, bringing it in from his shell corporations and porting it out to an accomplice.”

Olivia closed her eyes for a moment. “I can’t believe he’d do it.”

“The feds can.” Burton’s expression was grim. “They’ve got enough evidence to consider you involved. That means all of your possessions and holdings are subject to seizure.”

“All of it?” She paled. “Everything?”

Lex leaned forward. “But she didn’t keep the money.”

“Not at that step. They don’t know where it eventually wound up, though. She could still have it somewhere.”

“And on those grounds they can take her house?”

“They can take it all,” Burton assured him. “Not right away, of course. First, they’ve got to get to the bottom of the whole scheme, and it’s tangled enough that it could take a year or more. Quite frankly, that’s the reason they’re sure his fiancée is involved.”

His fiancée? Keely? Lex frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She’s an accountant, didn’t you know? Worked for Briarson Financial. It’s unlikely someone like Bradley would have known enough to carry off this kind of scheme on his own and get past his internal auditors. With someone of her background helping him cook the books, though, it would be a cakewalk.”

“She’s an accountant?” Lex had assumed she’d majored in something like English literature or art history, one of those degrees for the ladies who lunched. Clearly, he’d been mistaken. “So they think she had something to do with it?”

“They’re almost certain of it. Mind you, they haven’t got any evidence yet, but they will. Trust me, they will.”

“If she’s involved, she’s in a position to clear my mother’s name, right?” Lex asked. Forget about vulnerable mouths and shadowed eyes. If she had the answers, he’d worm them out of her.

“Any testimony you can get from someone who’s involved would certainly help Olivia’s case,” Burton answered. “What we really need is to find your brother but he seems to have gone into the wind.”

Keely, though, Keely was right here.

“We should talk to the fiancée,” Burton said.

Lex felt a slow-burning anger awake. “Leave it to me.” And this time he’d get some straight answers, before his mother lost everything she had.

Olivia took a breath and straightened her posture in a move Lex recognized. No tears, no weakness here. “What happens next, Frank?”

“Nothing immediately. They’ll keep investigating until they’ve got it all worked out, put their case together. Then it’ll go to trial. With or without Bradley.”

“So we have time,” Lex said.

“Some. The sooner you can get the fiancée to come clean, the better off your mother will be.”

And the sooner he could go back to his life, escape the morass that was already beginning to suck him in.

Abruptly, he rose. “Then I guess I’d better get on it,” he said, holding his hand out to Burton.

“You hear from Bradley, you let me know immediately,” the lawyer said as he walked them out.

“You know it.”

The carpet in the hallway outside Burton’s downtown Stamford offices was thick and plush underfoot, the color of the brandy Pierce had favored. Ahead, light streamed through the glass walls that surrounded the ten-floor atrium lobby.

“I just can’t believe it was Bradley,” Olivia said as they waited for the elevator. “She must have pushed him into it.”

She might have been involved, but Lex had a pretty good idea nobody pushed Bradley anywhere. There was one trait they’d both inherited from their father, his stubborn single-mindedness. It had fueled Lex’s rise to the top of a difficult and dangerous field. It had also helped Bradley take a controlling position in Alexander Technologies, the position that had let him get away with his crimes.

For a while.

“Mom,” Lex said gently, “no one made Bradley run.”

But if Keely Stafford had helped him, then she knew how to untangle this rat’s nest. And she damned well needed to start talking.

“Bradley doesn’t know what to do with the mess she’s gotten him into,” Olivia maintained, but her voice was uncertain.

“Have you ever, in your entire life, seen Bradley do anything he didn’t want to do?”

“He couldn’t have done this on his own. I won’t believe it.”

Translation: she didn’t want to.

She had to face it, though, or she’d never get past it. “No one made him gamble, Mom.” Lex kept his voice gentle. “You saw the statements from the pit bosses. Brad got in trouble, he wanted out, and he wasn’t too concerned about how.”

Abruptly, the starch went out of Olivia’s posture and for just a moment she sagged against the railing that looked down over the lobby. “What am I going to do?” she whispered. “They’re going to take it all. How could he do this? How could he leave me with nothing?”

And now she did cry. All he could do was gather her against him and stand there, helplessly patting her back. No. Not helpless, never helpless. There was a way to fix this and he would find it.

Starting with Keely Stafford.

“Are you sure you’re going to be all right here tonight?” Jeannie stood behind the counter at the flower shop, buttoning her coat.