4. Embezzling

Rowan Valentino

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From a young age, I'd always known Matteo was the hotheaded one between us. He was easily irritated and snapped just as fast, but I always found a way to piss him off — intentionally or not.

We were a total of six in our family, including our parents. We had an older brother, Damon, and a younger sister, Natasha, who demanded everyone call her Tash, yet Matteo was the easiest to piss off.

He tried very hard to control himself, but he just wasn't very successful sometimes. It was so bad to the point that he had to be enrolled in an Anger Management Class which wasn't exactly a class because he was gone for three whole months.

We were around fourteen then and not having him around sucked like hell. He must've realized the same thing because even if he wasn't entirely changed when he got back, he tried harder.

I knew Matteo would be pissed at me and that was why I placed my phone on silent. I didn't want to know when he was trying to reach me because I would probably end up taking his call. We were twenty-seven already, yet we still did everything together. It helped that we had almost the same taste for everything. For the ones we didn't, we met in the middle.

I had a very good excuse for not showing up at our club though. Our company, which was initially our dad's that was handed over to us when Damon decided teaching was his passion, was going through some losses. They weren't major, but if we didn't look into it now, they would probably get bigger.

In other words, someone was embezzling from us.

I hadn't told my brother about it because he may end up letting his emotions cloud his logic, acting on anger instead. The only people that knew about it were my father, Damon, and my assistant, George.

Assistants were the one thing I and Matteo didn't share and I was grateful for that at that moment because George wouldn't go tattling to my brother about the embezzlement of funds.

George was a very good assistant. He was loyal as well and did the work of other employees. He deserved a promotion, but I was a selfish fuck and I knew I wouldn't find anyone as good as him, so I only increased his salary; Matteo was still searching for an assistant after his last one. He suggested we shared mine, but that was a capital no from me.

I expelled a sigh, conveniently shutting George up as I turned around in my chair, overlooking the city from where I was sitting.

My office was the best one in the building. It used to be my father's office and it almost caused an argument between me and my brother, but I was older and I called dibs, so I took it eventually.

I was tired. I'd been in the office since seven o'clock in the morning and it was past ten. It wasn't easy tracing what was spent on and by who without involving an accountant or the actual finance department. But I didn't want whoever was stealing from us to know that I was looking into it.

I and George had gone pretty far. We had narrowed it down to four employees. A lady from the accounting department and two men from the finance, one of which happened to be the head of the department, as well as the woman who was the head of the marketing department.

It was quite scary to realize that your employees would steal from right under your nose, but humans were humans and nothing was surprising recently.

The ringing of a phone made me turn back around. At first, I thought it was mine, then I remembered mine was on silent and my ringtone was the customized iPhone ringtone; I couldn't waste my time personalizing it.

I turned around just in time to catch the frown on George's face as he looked at his ringing phone. "Your brother is calling me. He has never called me."

His sentence brings a frown to my face as well because if Matteo tried to reach me through George, it must be important. "Pick up."

George shrugged, doing as I said. "Hello? George speaking." I rolled my eyes at his programmed words. "He's here with me… Okay, I will." As he got off the call, I knew the words he was going to say before he did. "He wants you to call him."

Thinking it might have been an emergency, I wasted no time picking up my phone and calling him. He answered on the first ring. "You asshole."

I laughed. "Hello to you too, brother."

Matteo wasn't as amused. "Don't worry, I'm not going to scold you now."

"You do realize I'm the older twin, right?" I spoke, spinning slowly on my chair. Apart from me and George's presence, the building was empty. Matteo always told me it wasn't safe, but he wasn't the boss of me.

"Act like it." He spat, sounding impatient.

"Why did you want me to call you?" I sighed when I realized arguing with him would be pointless. We would end up going in circles because even if we had the same taste in a lot of things, we barely agreed with one another.

"There are quite a number of things that I'd call you for, but we'll deal with those tomorrow. For now…" Matteo trailed off, making me pause in wonder. What was it that was making Matteo hesitate? Matteo never hesitated.

"Matt?"

"Yeah, right," he chuckled. He must've forgotten he was saying something. "She's just distracting and yes, I saw a woman."

Finally, he caught all 100% of my attention, making me sit up straight and stop spinning. "What do you mean you saw a woman?"

"Exactly what I said. I saw a woman and she's quite enchanting."

"But?" I prompted. There was always a but.

I could hear the dejection in my brother's voice when he said. "But she's a submissive."

I didn't know a penny about who this woman was and why Matteo was attracted to her, but it seemed like he was in her shackles already. The problem was that she was a submissive and we were masters. What were we going to do about that?