Page 32 of Catching a Con Man

“So you’re doing the job, right?” Ade asked. “You’ll take on the role?”

“Will you trap me in the tower if I don’t?”

“Nope, I’ll just transfer an amount equal to your salary into your bank every single month. And then you’ll feel so guilty about not working for that money that you’ll end up coming in to do the work anyway.”

“I could be a sugar baby,” I teased.

“Great. Let me just send you over your first monthly stipend to look pretty…” Ade took out his phone.

“No!” I knocked his phone out of his hand automatically, and Ade laughed. “Fine. No sugar baby, but let’s get this contract signed.”

Ade crossed the room and held the door open for me. “After you, sir.”

In my office, I clicked back onto the document as Ade sat in the chair that had been occupied by Cam earlier.

“You’ll get a few grand allowance to decorate your office up to standard,” Ade said, like a few grand for one room was somehow normal. “And if you need it, access to a company car. Or a train card, so you can-”

“Jesus FUCK!” I shouted, and Ade shifted backward.

“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

I swallowed past the weird lump in my throat. “My…my salary. Shit, Ade.”

“Your contract is entirely negotiable, and there are bonuses. If you feel that’s not enough…” Ade was saying the words as if they were standard procedure, but his grin gave him away.

“Halve it. Quarter it, even. I don’t deserve this.” I felt sick looking at the numbers on the screen. All six of them. More money than I’d made in all the years I’d worked so far.

“Half of it’ll be taxed anyway,” said Ade. “Chill out. And if you don’t think you deserve this…make it so you do. Work to deserve that income. Because you’ve worked fucking hard for pennies.”

I could feel tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. “Thank you, Ade. I mean it.”

I scanned through the rest of the contract. It was more legal jargon than I’d ever read in my life, but it all seemed good to me. The chance of a lifetime. Someone else’s lifetime. These things just didn’t happen to me.

I clicked on the box at the bottom to add a virtual signature…and hesitated. “What does this mean…for us?” I asked.

“What do you want it to mean?” Ade asked.

“I…don’t know. I really like you. And I like what we’ve done, and I’d like to do it again. I don’t want to take on a job with you and discover suddenly that I can’t even touch you.”

“Not even for a six-figure salary?” Ade asked. He leaned across the desk, and I got the feeling the answer mattered just as much to both of us.

“Not even then,” I admitted. “I’ll find another corner shop job if it means I can touch you.”

Ade reached over the desk, took my hand in his, and then leaned down to kiss my knuckles. “I own this company, but I’m not your boss. Cam is. And no matter what happens between us, good or bad, you are safe here.”

I pulled my hand away from his, just for a second, to type my name into the box, and to send it off into the ether. “Done.”

“Welcome to Electro, Mr Bevan. I’m sure you’re going to like it here.”

Ade

Tyler was putting me in a very difficult position. And I didn’t always hate difficult positions, so long as they were fun. But he had been working at Electro for two weeks — two diligent, brilliant weeks from a man who just a week before that had been employed by a company that turned over in a year what we earned in a minute — and he had kept our relationship professional. So professional. Painfully professional.

The Electro Family Car concept had gone out on display earlier in the day, and much as I wanted Tyler there, it really wasn’t his job to be. So I’d done my job as CEO and sold the shit out of the car to a crowd of fanboy journalists who would drool over every word I said. And with Xavier taking his sweet time with the figures, I had slipped in a couple of references to an impossibly low price, just to get them salivating even more.

Electro Tower was buzzing with excitement after the announcement, and champagne was free-flowing and canapés being eaten by the dozen. Our whole executive, as well as staff from all levels of the company, had congregated in the conference room. The music had been turned up, and the party spilled out onto the rest of the floor. But I still couldn’t see him there.

“Have you seen Tyler?” I asked Cam, who was dancing with a company secretary. He disengaged to point to Tyler’s closed door, the privacy glass fully clouded. I checked my watch. “Surely he can’t still be working.”

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