All Chapters of What the Budget Bought: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

Like hell I was making him a feast. He could keep dreaming.I lifted my phone, snapped a picture of the hand-cut prime beef going for forty-five dollars a pound behind the counter, and sent it over."Derek, I'm picking out the beef now. This cut look okay to you?"Derek fired back instantly and started directing me through the screen."Whoa, that piece's way too fatty."Nobody wants anything that rich these days. Get the leaner cut. It looks dry, but it's got more chew to it."And since you're buying beef, add a pepper steak tomorrow. Heavy on the onions. That's my favorite."One more thing. Get him to knock off the change. Don't just stand there paying sticker price like an idiot."I let out a snort and nearly rolled my eyes out of my head.That beef was for the steak I was planning to sear at home for myself. Pepper steak, heavy on the onions?That depended entirely on how hard the meal-pouch factory had gone with the additives."Yep, sounds good, Derek. It's a nice cut. I

Looking at that tableful of stomach-turning feed, Derek struck first, jabbing a finger in my face."Dylan, what exactly are you playing at? The chairwoman carves out time from an impossible schedule to come down here, and you deliberately serve garbage to insult who, exactly?"You got a problem with the company? Or a problem with me?"Having finished with me, he spun to Aunt Victoria and flipped instantly into the loyal deputy betrayed beyond words."Ma'am, look at him. He always seemed like such a solid kid. I had no idea he had this in him."I told him a dozen times to take the money and prepare something decent. He could have bought fresh ingredients and cooked them himself, that would have been fine."Instead he goes and buys this unlabeled industrial junk. If this puts everyone in the hospital and drags the department's name through the mud, that's on me as the manager."He slapped his thigh like he'd been deceived on a historic scale.Watching Derek shrug off blame that f

The more he talked, the more convinced he got, flinging every accusation he could invent at me."Ma'am, use your judgment here. I held that money for the good of the department, and he found a way to exploit it."How else do you explain the supplier being right around the corner from us? He set this up with his family so they could eat the company's money. He's connected to them. He has to be."But Derek stating the exact opposite of the truth left a lot of people who didn't know the story completely lost.They looked at me, then at Derek, and started murmuring, because now nobody could tell what had actually happened."You think Dylan really took a kickback?""No way. He's always seemed straight with people."Huh.Derek's mud was landing nowhere near the target, but he did get one thing right.I am connected.Just not to the people who make the meal pouches.I glanced at Aunt Victoria's darkening face, sighed, ran a hand through my hair, and let a bitter smile show.I spre

"Yes, ma'am."Two security officers came in, got Derek under both arms where he lay like a wet sack, and hauled him straight out.He was still thrashing and shouting, eyes locked on that tableful of meal pouches, sick with regret."Ma'am! I was wrong! I know I was wrong! Give me one more chance! I've got parents to look after and kids at home!"The sound faded out at the far end of the hallway soon enough.If he hadn't gotten so greedy, if he hadn't gone after the new guy, maybe he'd have gotten to leave with his dignity.There's no maybe.The next few days, a storm tore through the company.You never know until you look, and once they looked, it was worse than anyone guessed.Over the years Derek had used his position to pad invoices, take kickbacks from suppliers, and pocket team-event funds. Nearly a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of company money, all told.Wilder still, he'd paid cash for a condo downtown with what he'd stolen, and stuffed his whole crowd of buddies