Accardi Chapter 13

Genevieve glared down at the email she was reading. Last month she’d discovered several discrepancies in a client’s holdings and assets. Gen reported the wrong amounts to IRS meaning she and the accounting firm could be held liable. Her client, however, the 68 year old Misty Cohen, wanted her to believe she’d merely forgotten the assets. The woman could run fifteen bakeries in town but didn’t realize she’d been hiding hundreds of thousands in an off-shore account? Gen cracked her knuckles, ready to lay down the threat to report the full amount before the authorities were involved when the door to her office slammed against the wall. 

Charlotte came skittering around the desk. Her strawberry-blonde hair was disheveled, her glasses sat askew on her nose and a beaming smile threatened to split her cheeks. She held up a paper and waved it in the air. 

“We have the chance of a lifetime,” Charlotte announced. 

Gen sighed and sat back in her chair. “For what?”

“I just got a call from a company in New York. They have some unaccounted for money and are looking to hire a firm to investigate,” Charlotte explained.

“Why would they come to us? Who recommended us down there?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care. I said yes,” Charlotte exclaimed.

Gen rubbed her temples. “Charlotte, we discussed you not taking on new clients without running it by me first.”

“I know, I know but I couldn’t turn this down! The company is worth *millions*, Gen. We could start catering to higher clients like we’ve always wanted! It’s a stepping stone!”

Gen crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “Fine. Hand it to Lauren.”

Charlotte’s face fell. “No. No way in hell. You need to do this one.”

Gen groaned. “I can’t, Charlotte. I’m still dealing with the Cohen situation. I have two other clients who I need to meet with not to mention training the new girls and we promised Lauren she could take on the next one we got.”

Charlotte shook her head. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she reopened them, Gen saw the more familiar expression of the stern businesswoman she’d worked with for nearly a decade. 

“Look,” Charlotte said in the tone that told Gen she was not backing down on this decision. “We went into business together for a reason. I bring the clients and assign the accountant, you take on our most challenging accounts and…” Her eyes dipped to the computer screen and back. “...clients.” Charlotte threw the folder down on the desk. “This account could get us out of the hole. We need more than grocery store owners and hair stylists, okay?” Charlotte started to leave the room, having decided the argument had reached its inevitable end. “I redacted the company name as you like. I told them they could expect a conclusion within a week. Good?”

Gen could tell she was stopped in the doorway behind her. Gen stared out the window her desk faced. She flung her head back on the chair.

“Fine.”

“Thanks! This is great!” Charlotte sang, back to her giddy mood. 

The door clicked closed and Gen glanced down at the impressively thick folder. She flicked it open and glanced at the summary of the company. Most of the words had been redacted: useless information that would only give Gen bias. Expenses, affiliated companies, accounts and person names were labeled instead with coded letters. Her eyes skimmed the preliminary numbers. 

Before she knew it, Gen was leaning over her desk and running her nail along the numbers. By lunch she was hunched over a stack of seemingly disheveled papers. Her hair had been put into a clip, her reading glasses sat perched on her nose. She dotted notes down without looking at what she wrote, too afraid to take her eyes off the numbers the company had been reporting. When the room darkened, signaling the work day had long since come to an end, Genevieve sat cross-legged on the floor with a circle of paper around her. 

“Knock, knock,” came a voice at the doorway.

Gen looked up and smiled at two of her roommates watching her from the door. Abigail held up a bag of chinese food. “Charlotte called. We brought food,” Abigail explained.

Her other roommate, Sarah, laid a blanket down on the floor in the corner of the room not overflowing with paperwork. The three of them sat down and passed around the various food containers. As Gen ate for the first time that day, she listened to her roommates complain about their lives. Abigail was a hairdresser and dished out the best gossip in town. Sarah worked for child services but somehow managed to make the most dreadful situations she witnessed always have a happy ending. 

“So am I going to ask her or are you?” Abigail asked.

Sarah looked quickly between Gen and Abigail. “I thought we flipped for it and you lost.”

“Noooo, I…”

“What?” Gen asked, narrowing her eyes at each of them.

“What’s going on with you?” Abigail asked.

Gen raised a brow and started to dig into her fries. “What do you mean?”

“We *mean* that ever since you got back from Jada’s wedding you’ve been… off,” Sarah said. 

“Off?”

“Off,” both women confirmed. 

“Even Becca noticed,” Abigail revealed. 

Gen chuckled and pushed up from her elbows. Becca was one of their other roommates, an IT analyst who worked from home. She rarely emerged from her dedicated work station in her room. Gen looked back and forth between the two debating on whether this information was worth sharing to her entire household and then some. She sighed and decided telling *someone* was better than holding it in longer. 

“Fine…” Gen relented. The two women sat up straighter as they waited. “I met a guy.”

Both women squealed and clapped their hands. 

“About time.” 

“Tell us, tell us. When? Where?”

Gen couldn’t help the smile or blush that came over her face. “At the bar the night before the wedding.”

“So are you guys like *talking* or…” Sarah pushed. 

Gen’s blush grew hotter. “No. No, it was a one time thing.”

Her roommates exchanged looks of surprise. “Really?” Abigail asked. “*You* had a one-night stand?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” Gen asked, slightly insulted. 

“Come on,” Abigail teased. “It’s you. I mean, hell, you made Brian wait…” she glanced at Sarah for confirmation. “Two months?” Sarah nodded her agreement. 

Gen slapped Abigail on the arm. “It was a month… and a couple weeks,” Gen tried but failed to disagree. “Speaking of Brian…” Both women groaned and threw their heads back. “I saw him at the wedding.”

That got their attention. “Really?” Sarah asked. “What happened?”

“Well he was there with his new fiance,” Gen said, holding out on the juicer details as any good storyteller would. 

“Fiance?” 

“*Pregnant* fiance,” Gen added.

“Pregnant fiance?!”

*“Nine months* pregnant fiance,” Gen finished.

Sarah stared at her with an open mouth while Abigail fell theatrically backward.

“You’re joking, right?” Sarah asked.

Gen shook her head. “Yeah, so I needed a little confidence boost and so I went to the guy’s house and…”

“Wait…” Abigail interrupted, sitting up with lightning speed. “You said you met him at the bar the night before.”

“I…” Gen stammered, heat lowering to her chest.

“Oh my God, you little slut. Twice?” Sarah teased.

“It was just the once,” Gen said.

“The story keeps changing,” Abigail observed. “He must have fucked her brainless. That’s why she’s been so off kilter.”

“Can you imagine how gorgeous he must be to make her do something so out of character?” Sarah mused as if Gen was no longer in the room.

“Hey,” Gen warned.

“Louis had to have set it up,” Sarah guessed. “He and Jada probably worked together when they figured out what Brian had done.”

“100 percent,” Abigail confirmed. “If I were Jada, that’s what I’d do for my sister.”

“An inside job,” Sarah agreed, sanding her hands together. 

“An inside job,” Genevieve repeated slowly while the two women continued to make jokes at her expense. “An inside job,” Gen repeated a second time. She shot to her feet, sending her bottle of water across the blanket.

“Woah!” 

“What the…”

“An inside job!” Genevieve exclaimed. 

She rifled through the papers on her desk and found the code she’d been looking for. She scanned other various paper work and started highlighting the three codes she’d finally puzzled together. She spun around and held the papers up for her friends. They looked at each other and then back at Gen as if they were a second away from calling the local mental hospital. 

“It was an inside job. The accountant!”