Page 99 of Axe Backwards
So I went back home, finalized the divorce, quit my soul-sucking corporate job, packed up the car, and moved to Maine.
Lovewell was not for everyone. Small-town life could be challenging. But I had a purpose, and that was enough for me. I dove into taking over the food pantry and I reconnected with nature. The town took me in and kept me busy. I met Alice and Becca, and everything clicked.
So I’d be damned if the Huxleys destroyed this place. It was bad enough that our region had been ravaged by the opioid epidemic. The promises of economic relief rarely became reality in rural communities like ours. We struggled and we fought for everything we had. And slowly, this town was rebuilding.
People had jumped in to help with the lumberjack competition, which was now a two-day event and had sponsors, vendors, and a police detail to manage traffic. This place stood up for itself.
So I was here, doing my damndest, to stand up for my town.
Denis settled at his desk again. Then he slipped a thin blue thumb drive out of his computer and put it in his breast pocket, giving it a single pat.
A thrill zipped through me. Keeping a thumb drive close like that? There was likely something worthy of interest there.
“Let’s get to it. I am a very busy man, but I’m happy to explain it all to you.”
Eye twitching, I pressed my lips together tightly and opened up the booklet he’d given me, as well as a notebook.
“I have so many questions,” I gushed, a little over-the-top, I supposed. “Can you walk me through page three? The schedule?”
I let him explain every detail, biting my tongue as he criticized my financial management and ordering schedule and bemoaned the terrible state of my wiring. How he’d assessed the wires, I didn’t know. Though I was vibrating with annoyance, I nodded along and took notes carefully, as if he was sharing hot stock tips.
I tapped my chin, doing my best impression of an airhead. “Couldn’t you send your construction guys over to do it for free? These proposed invoices are so confusing.”
He gave me a condescending, pitying look. “I can see how you’d be confused. We run a complex business empire comprised of many subsidiaries. Our main outfit is here, but we’ve got our hands in lots of things. Phobos, which does construction and Alkaios, which does the real estate investment and development. And Kratos manages the properties and collects rents.” He smirked, loving the feel of bragging about his family’s business. “Then there are Deimos and Hyperion, which manage our less traditional businesses.” He chuckled to himself. “But you don’t need to worry about that.”
Nodding, I wrote down each name. Parker would have a field day with these.
“For sophisticated business entities like ours, it’s very normal to move money around, especially for tax purposes.”
Internally, I scoffed, but externally, I gave him an encouraging smile.
“So when someone contracts with Huxley Construction, they’re buying materials through Phobos and funneling payroll to Kratos.” He laced his fingers on top of his desk. “It gets complicated, but it’s necessary for tax purposes. Not that you would understand. And we really want to help you out.”
Was he admitting to tax fraud? I didn’t have a good grasp on what tax fraud really entailed, but this definitely sounded like it. Was this how the rich got richer? Moving money around to avoid taxes?Motherfuckers.
“How does the food pantry figure in?”
“Let me take this spreadsheet and make it into a graph.” He picked up his laptop, then rounded his desk and hovered beside me. He didn’t sit. Instead he stood a little too close and set the laptop on the desk so I could see the screen. “It may be easier for you to understand this way.”
He pulled the thumb drive out of his pocket and plugged it into the USB port. Why a thumb drive? Why couldn’t he store his work in the cloud like a normal person? He was definitely hiding something.
When he double-clicked on the thumb drive tab, a window with hundreds of folders appeared. Each was labeled, but one jumped out at me.
Hebert.
Why would he have a Hebert file? What was in it? I kept my face neutral as he toggled around in front of me, not even bothering to be discreet, though I scanned the files and committed as many names to memory as I could. Lots of Greek names, the last names of several people in town, includingSouza, our former police chief, Lambert, our current mayor. What were they doing?
“Here we go.” He opened up an Excel spreadsheet and quickly converted it to a graph.
“These are your expenses. These are the proposed upgrades. Invoices, materials, labor.”
Head tilted, I studied each piece of the graph he pointed out.
“Our donation schedule is here.”
My heart lurched. The donation amounts had doubled. This would be more than enough to keep every person we serviced fed and every baby diapered. It was more money than I’d ever even considered asking for. And way more than his initial offer a few weeks back.
He turned to me and smiled. He was entirely too close for comfort. “See what I’m talking about? Everyone wins. We help you financially, you hire us to work on the property.”
