Forever Blake (Once Upon a Player Book 3) by Elena Matthews (free books to read .TXT) 📗

“Yes, absolutely. I’d love to.”

Pushing myself out of my chair, I grab all the documents I need, and I round my desk and make my way across my office to my four-seater table, which sits by the floor-to-ceiling windows that have an incredible view of downtown Dallas. “Take a seat.”

She follows me and sits on the opposite side of the table from me. I slide a folder her way, and she opens it. I watch intently as her eyes scan the page of the document, her eyelashes fanning across her cheeks every couple of seconds when she blinks.

God, she’s so beautiful.

It’s like she doesn’t even have to try. She’s just this natural beauty. She could make any guy fall head over heels for her.

When I realize I’m flat-out staring at her, I quickly avert my eyes to the table, waiting for her to finish reading.

“Is this what I think it is?” she asks.

“What do you think it is?”

“Well, it seems your client believes his business partner is laundering money through their real estate construction company.”

“That’s correct.”

“How does he know?” she asks, interested.

“Well, for one, our client’s books haven’t been adding up, and the customer invoices don’t tally up against quotations. Plus, outgoings for supplies have risen, meaning they’ve been spending more than usual.”

“How has the client only now just realized this?”

“Well, he was off sick for a while; he was undergoing chemotherapy for testicular cancer.”

Sympathy shadows her eyes. “Oh gosh, that’s terrible. Is he okay now?”

I nod. “Yes, he’s all clear now. He returned to work just a few weeks ago, and he spotted all these subtle changes that an outsider wouldn’t have noticed, but since he’s been part of this company since the very beginning, he knows their books better than anyone, so he became suspicious immediately.”

“I mean, rightly so. It’s all things that indicate accepting and disposing of dirty money.”

“You seem quite familiar with money laundering,” I say.

She nods her head. “We covered it a bit during my business classes, and I know it’s extremely hard to charge people with it because it’s easily undetected if done right.”

“Well, it is for those who don’t know what they’re looking for,” I add with a cocky grin.

Reagan smiles, and for a moment, I forget my train of thought because, God, her smile could cause a damn pileup on the freeway. I just find myself lost in her gaze until her next question brings me out of my reverie.

“What kind of illegal business do you think his business partner could be involved in?”

Tilting my head from side to side, I say, “It’s hard to say. It could be drugs, guns, fraudulent artistry. Anything that involves dirty money will one hundred percent be laundered through a company. It’s the only way for it to go unnoticed by the banks and the IRS. It’s a smart way to run illegal businesses, but one wrong decision, one wrong move, and it can fold like a deck of cards.”

“How do you find out if it is laundered money?”

“Well, we simply stack the cards and just wait for them to fold.”

She chuckles, shaking her head a little. “You want to try that in basic terms I will understand and not in a badass Harvey Specter one-liner metaphor?”

“Who’s Harvey Specter?”

“He’s pretty much you, but he wears better suits,” she tells me with a beaming smile.

I give her an are you fucking kidding me glare. “Trust me, I guarantee this Harvey Specter doesn’t have shit on me.”

She points her head in my direction. “He always says stuff like that, too.”

“He sounds like my kind of guy,” I say, pretending to position my tie back into place.

Giggling, she resumes, “Can you please elaborate the we simply stack the cards and just wait for them to fold metaphor?”

“Sorry, you have such an incredible grasp of the law that I sometimes find it hard to believe that you haven’t attended law school yet. You could honestly run circles around our paralegals. But in learning terms, the best way to figure out if a company is involved with money laundering is to stack the cards with a paper trail of when the company suddenly started making more money and figure out where it came from. Because money just doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It has to come from somewhere, and money has to be deposited. It doesn’t have to be a suspicious amount, but if it differs from a regular pattern, even by a little bit, then it’s usually a voice for concern…and that’s when shit begins to fold. When one card falls down…the rest will quickly follow.”

She purses her lips, as if to hold in a laugh, and I narrow my eyes at her.

“What?”

“You really love your card metaphors, don’t you?”

I pause for a moment and rewind the last five seconds in my head. I chuckle to myself when I pinpoint what I just said. “I guess I do, huh? Honestly, I didn’t even realize I did it until you pointed it out. Christ, you’re going to give me a complex,” I tell her with amusement.

That glee is soon wiped off my face when I remember who else loves using metaphors, specifically poker metaphors. It’s probably the reason why I unconsciously say them. They just come off the tongue.

“You know who else does that?”

Seeing the horror in my eyes, she knows exactly who I’m talking about, and she almost comes off her seat, laughing so hard.

“It seems the student has become the master,” she spits out through her hysteria.

I just hold my head in my hands, shaking my head with horror. I glance in Reagan’s direction without moving my neck.

“Shit, I love your dad. I just hadn’t noticed I was becoming him.”

This makes her laugh even harder, causing mascara to run down her blushing cheeks.

“Oh, I’m glad my misery is amusing to you.”

“It is. You have made my day,” she breathes out, wiping under her eyes with her delicate fingers.

Sitting up from my despair-induced huddle, I dig out