The price of him

"The thing about auditing a billionaire's books is that the lies are always elegant — it's the truth that's messy." I said that to Petra once, back when I still thought this job was just a job. She laughed. I didn't. The elevator doors opened on the forty-second floor, and the first thing I noticed was the silence. Not the comfortable kind. The engineered kind — the kind that costs money. No phones ringing, no keyboards clattering, no one laughing too loud near the water cooler. Just the soft, deliberate hum of an empire operating at full efficiency, every person in this glass-walled office moving like they knew exactly what would happen to them if they didn't. I stepped out, adjusted the strap of my bag, and told myself my heart rate was elevated because of the coffee I'd had on the subway. Not because I was walking into the most consequential lie of my life. The receptionist looked up. Blonde, polished, smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Ms. Calloway?" "That's me." "Mr. Ashworth is expecting you." She rose from her desk. "I'll take you through." Of course he is, I thought. He's been expecting me for longer than I have. I followed her past rows of glass-walled offices, past people who glanced up and then looked quickly away, the way you do when you've learned that noticing things in this building has consequences. The carpet was dove grey. The walls were white with the kind of art that signals wealth without screaming it — a single brushstroke on a canvas, framed in something pale and expensive. I catalogued everything. It's a habit. Forensic accountants don't turn it off. We stopped in front of a door at the end of the corridor. The receptionist knocked once, then opened it without waiting for an answer. "Ms. Calloway, sir." She stepped aside. I walked in. The first thing I registered was the view. Floor-to-ceiling windows, the whole Manhattan skyline laid out like something that had been arranged specifically to make people feel small. The kind of view that says I won without a single word. The second thing I registered was him. Dominic Ashworth was standing at the window with his back to me, phone pressed to his ear, one hand in his pocket. He was taller than the photographs suggested. Broader. The suit was dark and fitted well enough that it looked less like clothing and more like armor he'd had custom-built. He didn't turn around. "Cancel it," he said into the phone. His voice was low and unhurried, the voice of someone who has never once had to raise it to be obeyed. "I don't care what Reeves said. Cancel it, reschedule for Thursday, and tell him if he's late again I'll find someone who understands the value of my time." He hung up. A beat of silence. Then he turned. Dark eyes found mine immediately — not the searching kind, not the kind that were still figuring out where to land. He looked at me the way you look at something you've already placed. Already filed. Already decided what to do with. It lasted less than two seconds. Then he crossed the room toward me, hand extended, expression professionally neutral. "Ms. Calloway." "Mr. Ashworth." I shook his hand. Firm, brief. "Thank you for seeing me." "Your firm came highly recommended." He gestured toward the chair across from his desk. "Sit." Not please sit. Not won't you sit. Just: sit. I sat, because arguing about it would be childish and I needed this job. I set my bag down beside the chair and folded my hands in my lap and looked at him across the desk and thought: you have no idea what I'm here to do to you. I almost believed it. "You specialize in forensic accounting," he said. It wasn't a question. He was looking at a file on his desk, but I had the distinct impression he wasn't reading it — that he'd already read it, and this was performance. "I do." "Previous clients include Harlow Financial, the Meridian Group, and a three-year stint at the DA's office." He looked up. "You left the DA's office." "I did." "Why?" "Better pay in the private sector." Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. "That's the answer you give people." My stomach tightened. "It's the answer." He held my gaze for a moment, and I held his right back, because I have learned in twenty-seven years that the first person to look away loses something they don't always get back. He looked down at the file. "This audit is comprehensive," he said. "Eighteen months of financial records across six subsidiaries. You'll have full access to the relevant accounts, the internal ledgers, and my CFO." He turned a page. "You'll be based here, in the building. Office on thirty-nine." "I was told I could work remotely with —" "You were told incorrectly." He didn't look up. "I don't let people with access to my financial records work from a kitchen table in Brooklyn, Ms. Calloway." My jaw tightened. He knows where I live. Of course he knows where I live. His people vetted me. That's standard. That's not alarming. I made myself relax, muscle by muscle, the way my therapist taught me before I stopped going to therapy. "Fine," I said. "In-house." "Good." He closed the file and looked at me again. "I want weekly reports. Written, not verbal. If you find something that concerns you, you come to me first — not your firm, not my CFO, not anyone else. Me." "That's not standard protocol." "This isn't a standard audit." "Then what is it?" His expression didn't change. "It's an audit of a company that has been the subject of two anonymous tips to the SEC in the past six months, both of which turned out to be entirely without merit." He leaned back in his chair, unhurried, watching me. "I'd like to know who's interested enough in my business to invent problems with it. Whoever conducted this audit would be uniquely positioned to notice certain patterns. Irregularities in the irregularities, if you like." I looked at him. He looked at me. He wants a bloodhound, I thought. He wants someone to follow the trail back to wherever it started. The irony was so sharp it almost made me laugh. "You want me to find your enemy," I said. "I want you to find my numbers." He stood — the meeting was apparently over. "What you find along the way is between you and your professional judgment." I rose. Picked up my bag. Walked to the door. "Ms. Calloway." I stopped. Turned. He was still standing behind his desk, hands resting on the surface, watching me with that same even, unreadable expression. "The last firm I hired for something like this," he said, "found nothing. Because there was nothing to find. Whatever someone is trying to make this company look like, it isn't." A pause. "I trust you'll draw your own conclusions." "I always do," I said. I walked out. The elevator was empty on the way down. I pressed the button for the lobby and leaned against the mirrored wall and stared at my own reflection and thought about the file sitting in my apartment — the real file, the one his CFO's phone number was in, the one with the specific accounts I'd been told to examine and the specific irregularities I'd been told to surface. I thought about Theo. About the number the man on the phone had said so pleasantly, like he was quoting me a price on something ordinary. Three hundred and forty thousand dollars, Ms. Calloway. Due in full by the end of the year. Unless, of course, we can work something out. The elevator opened. I walked through the lobby and out into the cold March air and stood on the sidewalk outside Ashworth Tower and tipped my head back and looked up at the building against the white sky. Forty-two floors of glass and silence and a man who looked at me like he already knew every answer and was just waiting to see which questions I'd ask. He's hiding something, I thought. And then, quieter, the thought I didn't want: So am I. My phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number — the same unknown number that had bkeen my only contact for the past three weeks. How was the first meeting? I stared at it for a long moment. Then I typed back: Fine. I'm in. I put the phone in my pocket and started walking, and told myself for the hundredth time that I was doing this for Theo, and that Dominic Ashworth was just a name on a file, and that the way he'd looked at me across that desk meant absolutely nothing at all. I was good at telling myself things. I just wasn't always good at believing them.