“It’s all for your protection.”
“Bullshit. You’re not worried about me. You want William almost as bad as I do.” Mason growled as his thoughts turned back to the man in question. He was screwing over the company. Mason had no doubt about it. He just couldn’t prove it. Yet. Once he was able to, he’d be sliding into William’s job before he knew what happened. “The man practically ordered me to off someone. He has a God complex and needs to be dealt with. I don’t have time for this shit. Take him the fuck out!” Mason whispered heatedly.
“God complex? That’s a good way to describe you. I know you’re only in this for personal reasons. Don’t try to convince me otherwise. You were the one who came to us, remember?”
“Only because you came highly recommended, and you assured me you’d take care of him.” Mason took a deep breath, trying to calm his ire. “Have you and your resources found anything out?”
“Yes. We believe the threat to the Culpeper Hedge Fund is real. We got our hands on Carl’s reports before he was dealt with, and from what we can deduce, this has the makings of a major Ponzi scheme. We also believe William Baxter is correct in his assessment that someone else was the brainpower behind tampering with it. We believe that person is William Baxter.”
Oh shit. Mason shut his eyes. “That’s impossible.”
“Why? You were the one who found possible erroneous expenses on a small open-ended fund he managed.”
“That, and he was kiting. I thought he was trying to screw over F and B, not bilk investors.” If William was stealing from clients, Mason was in much deeper than he’d realized. It went way beyond bogus expenses and delaying transactions. “I know he’s dirty enough to skirt the law, but what you’re suggesting is in another realm.” If there was any truth to this and word got out, it would destroy the company. Hell, even if it wasn’t true but suspicions came to light, it would be almost as damaging. All of Mason’s work would be for nothing.
The man laughed. “So murder isn’t a big stretch, but stealing millions is?”
Mason swallowed and tried to slow his frantic thoughts. “Okay. For the sake of argument, let’s say this is true. That Carl was working something big, and William was the brainpower behind it. Why would he order me to kill the man working with Carl if he’s that man?”
“I never said Carl was working on this. He’s just a pawn in William’s game. But if he has you believe Carl was involved and has you searching for someone else, it’ll throw you off his trail. Not to mention, make you focus on something where his name isn’t directly attached. He knows Carl is gone, and now he has you chasing a ghost.” There was a pause, and Mason was momentarily speechless while he waited. “We need you to confirm this, of course. ”
“Damn it! I didn’t sign up for this.” Oh no, this definitely changed things. A fucking lot. “How the hell am I going to get him to admit anything?” If William was even slightly smart, he’d have covered all his tracks.
“We’ll leave that up to you. We can’t take him out without knowing what he did or how involved he is.”
“That doesn’t help me.”
“Sorry. You have a job to do, and so do I.”
The phone went dead, and Mason threw it on his desk. How the hell did this get so big so fast? If he was being honest, he wasn’t too surprised about William being involved in something bigger than tampering with a small hedge fund, but it sure as hell didn’t make things easy for Mason.
When he’d found excessive billing on the fund William controlled, he’d thought he could dig up more wrongdoing and take it to the executives. He couldn’t go with something that’d just get the man a slap on the wrist. William was Edward Baxter’s son, for crying out loud. It’d take more than what he’d uncovered to push William out the door and leave his position free and clear for Mason. If William had orchestrated a major Ponzi scheme, losing his job would be the least of his worries. The man would be facing serious jail time.
Jesus, if William was stealing millions of dollars from investors and using one of the company’s most prestigious funds to do it, Mason knew he’d stumbled upon something huge. William was going down, but Mason had to be careful not to let the jerk take the company down with him.
Problem was Mason didn’t know how huge this scheme was, how deep it went...or who he’d be able to trust.
Chapter Eight
This was all kinds of fucked up.
It’d taken Mason hours to wrap his head around the latest development, and it had been a bitter pill to swallow. Years building a name for himself at this company, fighting his way up the corporate ladder, could all be obliterated. It wasn’t just the knowledge many people could be in on the wrongdoing, but that said illegal activity could bring down the entire fucking organization. If they were talking just a few million dollars and a few people, then Fieldstein and Baxter could pay investors back out of profits, even be able to pay fines while the key players were thrown in jail. But if this had been going on a while, the amount stolen could be astronomical. Not to mention what a scandal of this caliber would do to the company’s image.
It would cease to exist.
Mason had big aspirations, always had. When he’d stumbled upon William’s skimming money off the top of the fund he’d managed, Mason saw it as an opportunity knock out his competition and move up to the highest
