Tessa spoke gently. Stefania said, “Take care of yourself. It’s a bit cold lately, so stay warm.” “I will.” Tessa nodded.
Remus then told lan, “Prepare some supplements and send them to Nicholas’ place.” He looked at Tessa. “You need them.” Tessa smiled. ‘Thank you, Grandpa.”
After Nicholas had breakfast with Tessa the next day, he went to work. Not long after he stepped into his office, Edward came in looking solemn. “We’ve gotten the results, sir.”
“And?” Nicholas shot him a look. Edward reported, “Earlier this year, one of Adam’s companies was in the red. To not raise any suspicion, he used the money of another company to cover the first company’s losses.”
“Is that it?” Nicholas frowned. I don’t think it’s that simple. They wouldn’t have taken that risk with me if that was the case. They would have gone for a safer alternative and kept things hidden. Those sly old foxes.
Huh, now that you mentioned it, it does sound weird. “I should double check the amount of the losses and the branch’s reserves.” “Do that. And tell the finance department to help out.” Nicholas nodded.
Edward nodded. Their investigation yielded results later that day, and as they guessed, something was wrong. Edward came back looking somber. “You were right, sir. Something is indeed wrong.”
Nicholas squinted. “What did you find?” “After due diligence, we found a lot of inconsistencies in the ledgers. There’s a shortfall of about a hundred and fifty million.”
Nicholas’ face fell. He hissed, “Keep looking into it. I want to find out what that money was used for.” A hundred and fifty million is no joke As the severity of the situation finally dawned on Edward, he quickly went to investigate. An hour later, he came into Nicholas’ office in a hurry. “We might have a big problem, sir.”
“What is it this time?” Nicholas looked at him. With anger in his voice, Edward said, “I told my men to check the branch’s transaction history, and they found a big one. They paid a big sum of money for… something.”
“What do you mean by something?” Nicholas stared at Edward fixedly. He had a guess what that something was. Edward stammered, “I-Illegal stuff, sir.”
Nicholas shot up from his seat with a look of shock. In disbelief, he asked again, “What did you say?”
“Adam and Joseph have been using the company’s money to deal with contraband,” Edward bit the bullet and repeated himself while giving Nicholas more details. “And they’ve been doing it for a long time, so they must’ve made a ton of money from it.”
Nicholas was not just angry now. He was livid. It felt like the air around him would explode. “Moreover, they struck the deal using the company’s name, sir.”
Edward was staring at the ground by then as he was too scared to meet Nicholas’ eyes, but he could still feel the air of the office filling up with tension and fury. Nicholas’ rage was almost palpable, and Edward tensed up.
Like a serpent, Nicholas hissed, “How. Dare. They?”
