“Brian Sullivan happened,” Jake said.
Chapter 44
“I knew it!” I pounded my fist in my hand. “I knew Brian Sullivan was up to his neck in this.”
Jake gave me an odd look. “Brian Sullivan wasn’t part of this.”
“But you just said—”
Jake shook his head. “You misunderstood. I had Jonah set up the accounts, but I told him not to keep any information at the office or use the firm’s network. This needed to be completely walled off from the firm’s legitimate accounts. But Brian found out and thought Jonah was setting up a side gig to steal clients. Jonah was afraid he was going to get fired so he made up some bullshit story about how this particular client was very secretive and required all kinds of extra security, blah, blah, blah.”
“And Brian believed that?” I asked.
“I don’t know what he believed. All he cared about was that the firm got its two and twenty management fee, which was a problem since I’d sold the Russians on a flat fifteen percent. One thing you should know about these guys is they’re ridiculously cheap. They’re always looking for a deal and pride themselves on never paying retail for anything. And if they can steal it instead of paying for it, that’s always their preference, no matter how much money they have.”
“And Brian wouldn’t agree to fifteen?” I asked.
“Jonah didn’t want to go there. He thought he’d ask too many questions. Plus he’d seen some, shall we say, questionable business practices involving some of Brian’s legitimate clients.”
“What does that mean?” Aunt Maddy asked.
“Well, I’m not saying the guy’s Bernie Madoff, but if you’ve got money invested with him, I suggest you move it. Brian’s been known to inflate earnings statements to make his results look better than they are, then use borrowed money to make up the difference. When Jonah told me what he found, I tipped off the SEC and they opened their own investigation. But that investigation ran parallel to ours; there was no crossover. The SEC just knew not to look into any of the accounts Jonah set up for me.”
“Then how did you resolve the fee issue?” I asked.
“Jonah thought he could run Brian’s playbook on the Russians’ accounts. I told him not to, that he was playing with fire. You get caught stealing money from a rich person, you go to jail. You get caught stealing money from a mobster, you get a bullet in the head.”
“Except this time, it was a bullet in the chest that went into my daughter’s head.”
Jake’s whole body sagged. “Yes. Maybe if they’d hired a professional, it would’ve been a shot to the head and Amelia would’ve survived. But the nephew wasn’t that good of a shot. He’s lucky he hit Jonah at all.”
“Lucky?” I asked coldly.
“Unlucky,” he corrected. “The whole situation was unlucky. The person the nephew should’ve come after was me. He thought he had.”
“But why would he have been looking for you in Santa Veneta?” Aunt Maddy asked. “Didn’t the Russians know you lived in LA?”
“I never told them where I lived for obvious reasons. And the nephew wasn’t bright enough to figure out someone like me would never post a picture of himself online. That’s how they found Jonah.”
“Jonah didn’t post pictures of himself online. He hated social media.” He thought it was a huge waste of time. I didn’t disagree, but I still used Facebook to keep up with old friends. Although I never posted photos of us. Mainly I just commented on other people’s posts.
“There was a picture of him on the firm’s website. We think the nephew must’ve gotten a screen grab of me from a security camera then ran a reverse image search and found Jonah that way. It was a stupid move because what he really wanted was the missing money, and once he killed Jonah, he had no way to get it. But the nephew was not what you’d call a strategic thinker.”
I collapsed onto the chair I’d been pacing in front of. I felt depleted. Jonah and Amelia were dead all because the management firm thought putting photos of their executives on the company website would make them seem friendlier? It was hard to believe something so innocuous could have such deadly consequences.
Of course, this wasn’t a random killing. For the nephew, it was personal. Not only did he think Jake was stealing from him but usurping his power too. He probably enjoyed killing Jonah; enjoyed getting his revenge. He never knew he killed the wrong man.
“I’m so sorry, Grace,” Jake said. “I never meant for any of this to happen. You have to believe me.”
I did believe him. But that didn’t mean I could forgive him. Not yet, and maybe not ever. But I could acknowledge his pain. I’d lost a husband and a child, but Jake lost his brother, his best friend, and his only family. “What happened after the police killed the nephew?”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked.
“I realize you couldn’t just go back undercover because the Russians thought you were dead, but what happened with the investigation? Are they all in jail now?”
“No. Once my cover was blown, the investigation ended. It had to.”
“Why? Couldn’t the FBI just send someone else in?”
“That’s not how it works, Grace. This was a multiyear effort with a lot of resources behind it.”
“Then after all that effort, why didn’t the FBI finish the job? Why didn’t they go in and arrest everyone? Surely, you had some evidence.”
“The goal was never to arrest the low-level guys. We wanted to take down the entire organization. Since we could no longer do that, the decision was made to focus our resources elsewhere.”
“Focus your resources elsewhere? What the hell does that mean?” It sounded like corporate doubletalk to me.
“Exactly what it sounds like. We shifted our focus to a different criminal organization, one that didn’t know my face. I believe you saw some of their files when you were snooping in my apartment.”
“Is that why you had a jeweler’s loop and all those articles about diamonds? I thought maybe you had a secret girlfriend and were thinking of proposing.”
Jake let out a laugh. “No, I’m not even dating anyone at the moment. But if you ever want to know anything about the four Cs, I’m your man. And that is as much information about the investigation as I’m going to give you, so don’t ask.”
“I don’t care about that investigation. I care about this one.”
“There is no active investigation of the Russians at this time, which isn’t to say there won’t be in the future.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. You may or may not investigate these people ten years from now. Not good enough, Jake. Jonah died trying to help you take these guys down. Maybe you can just walk away and move on to something else, but I can’t.”
