Page 110 of Stolen Kisses

Holding my head high, I walked up to them. "Did someone from management confirm the rumor?" I asked.

They both looked at me.

"I'm a broker," I explained.

"Right. Look, I can't even say where we heard the rumor first," one of them said. "I mean, there's one circulating at least once a year, and then it turns out to be nothing. I just heard this one a few times, so maybe there's truth to it this time."

“Okay. Thanks,” I said, going back to my seat with quick steps. Once I was sitting down, I took out my phone, texting Chase.

Hannah: Why is the SEC here? There's a rumor about some insider trading they're investigating.

He replied right away.

Chase: Yeah. They found some suspicious transactions from a user, but that happens more often than you think. Nothing to worry about. They’ve been tracking activity for a while.

Hannah: What is the account they're investigating?

He sent me a screenshot of a name and account number. All brokers had access to the online portal with clients' accounts, and I wanted to jump on it right away, but I had other things to do.

I breezed through my tasks, but I didn’t want to investigate the account while everyone was still here. At seven o’clock, I was finally alone. I wasn't sure why I was so cagey. Watching an account wasn't suspicious at all.

I opened the client portal, typed in the account number, and the recent transactions popped up. There were six. I gnawed at my lower lip. Each of the investments was in companies that had big scandals over the past months, and their shares took a nosedive.

But that wasn't unusual either. Unfortunately, many people sold their shares when the price went down instead of waiting for it to come back up—despite our recommendations.

I checked the dates of the transactions against the dates of the scandals and froze.

Each of them was made before the shares started dropping in price. Almost as if they really did have insider information.

The fact that it had happened every time right before the dip was what made it suspicious. Two or three strikes would've been a lucky guess, but six? This was all so obvious too.

I frowned. A bit too obvious, in fact. Always the same amount, always just the day before.

"Hannah, tell me everyone didn't just dump all their work on the new hire."

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed, startling in my seat. Duncan walked toward me as I put a hand on my chest.

He smiled. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

"I thought I was all alone here."

"And you are. There's no one on the entire floor. I just came here to see if the fridge in the break room's still got some food left."

"It doesn't," I said, smiling sheepishly. "I cleaned it out about an hour ago."

"Good for you." He glanced at the screen and frowned. "You're looking at Henson's Limited?"

I pursed my lips together.Damn it, why didn't I minimize it?On the other hand, this was Duncan Sterling. He was part of top management. I could be open with him.

"You heard?" he asked.

I nodded. "A lot of people did.”

“They know the name?"

"No. I got this from Chase. I asked him to send it to me as soon as I heard." I looked up at him and decided to just tell him exactly what I thought. "This looks suspicious."

"Usually I just brush off the commission when they come looking into things like this. I mean, they look anyway, and they never find anything, but there's something odd about this."

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