I laughed. “It’s not a miracle. It’s in there. When Colm started paying more attention to me, I stopped digging into it, afraid he’d catch on. But before I did, I grabbed every single document relating to his business going back years, and I shoved it all into that box. I just need to sort through it all and put it together.”
She nodded, looking thoughtful. “I can help with this.”
“No offense, but what do you know about laundering money?”
“No offense, but you’re just some Mob asshole. And I happen to be pretty good at this sort of thing. And—”
“Okay, okay,” I held up my hands, cutting her off. “You can help.”
Her face softened and she smiled. “Thanks, Liam.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“When do we get started?”
I shrugged. “Right now. Unless you got something better to do?”
She gave me a look and flipped the box, dumping the papers onto the floor. I moved over toward her and crouched down at her side, staring at the huge pile of papers.
“How long do we have?” she asked.
“Let’s just get it done as fast as we can.”
She frowned and turned back toward the papers, starting to page through them. I stared at her body, at her pale skin and smooth legs, and wished I could skip the paperwork.
But the paperwork would save our lives; fucking was just fun.
Chapter Eighteen: Ellie
I looked out over the room, at the stacks of paper, and realized I never wanted to touch another bank statement in my entire life.
Three hours of sorting. Three hours of meticulously going through each paper, figuring out what it was and sorting it into whatever pile we felt it belonged in. Three hours of mind-numbing boredom, although I had to admit that it was better than sitting up alone, wondering whether or not someone was going to break down the door and murder me.
And Liam was shockingly attentive. More and more it was becoming apparent that I completely misread him. I thought he was some muscled Mob jock who didn’t know the difference between a 401k and a W-4, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was savvy, clever, and had an eye for details. I felt a little bad for stereotyping him, but then again, who could blame me? He really was all of those Mob stereotypes, crass and crude and violent and tough, but he had another level to him that he didn’t show at first.
“I hate paper,” I grumbled as I finished off my stack.
Liam laughed. “Was that the last of it?”
I looked up at him. He was leaning against the wall, sipping a glass of wine, and grinning at me. When we first started, the room was covered in stuff; now, though, it was all stacked into neat little piles.
“Wow, we’re actually finished,” I said, surprised.
“Well, with the easy part at least.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed and sat down next to me.
“Now we have to start reading all this shit.”
I nodded. “Right, because you don’t have the full picture yet.”
“Exactly.” He took a long drink of wine.
I blinked and yawned. “What time is it?”
He looked at his watch. “A bit after midnight.”
“Long night ahead of us, then.”
“Listen, you don’t need to stay up. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
I glared at him. “No, thanks. I’m helping.”
He frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “You really don’t need to.”
“Just show me what you found already, and we’ll go from there.”
For a second, I thought he was going to argue. Instead, he leaned over me, his arm brushing against my chest, and grabbed a small pile of papers. Without another argument, he went through them one at a time, pointing out the tiny transactions to a foreign bank account. They took place over years; Liam said he did some rough math, and they equaled at least a half a million dollars. And those were only the ones that he knew about or noticed. Hidden away in the paper, there were bound to be more.
We got to work, digging through the papers and making note of anything fishy or odd. It was slow going at first, but I quickly fell into a rhythm. It felt like the numbers were swirling around me in the room, and I felt like I was starting to get a picture of what Colm’s life was like. Fifty dollars for dinner on a Tuesday night, three thousand dollars from a jewelry store, two hundred at a bar, three hundred at a casino. On and on the transactions went, one little number after another, each one signifying something so much more than itself.
Seen individually, each transaction was practically meaningless. There was no context. Sure, he spent eighty dollars at the grocery store, but there was only so much we could pull out of that single event. But that moment combined with every other moment gave a strange picture of a man’s life. Patterns started to emerge, habits and desires. For example, I quickly found out that he loved a particular deli; I didn’t know why or what he got there, but he went almost once a week.