~Michael~
I was disappointed I wasn’t able to spend more time with Is on her birthday, but I wasn’t going to let that keep me down now. I wasn’t going to because Izzy was now mine. Just that thought alone made me want to get up and just dance around.
But I was too tired to dance. I hadn’t thought doing an extra hour at the build today would be so tiring, but it was.
Right now, Izzy and I were lying down on the grass staring up at the stars. Or at least I was. Is had ended up bringing out her laptop because her mom was online and she hadn’t talked to her in a bit.
But I didn’t mind. I didn’t want to keep Is from talking to her mom without having to wait for a delayed reply that came with email or the price of a phone call.
I was on my back looking up at the dark sky with one arm crossed behind my head. My other arm was around Is as she laid against my side with her head propped up on my shoulder so she could see the screen of the laptop. Even the simplest things like this made me beyond happy.
I turned my head so that my face was in Izzy’s hair. The smell of her shampoo filled my nostrils. I buried my head in deeper and smelled her neck, trying to memorize her scent.
“Uh, Mikey?” Is said. There was a slight edge of panic in her voice. I froze, was this wrong, me sniffing her hair
“Eh?” I asked sheepishly.
“What did you spend eight mil on?” Is asked sweetly. I sat up immediately.
“Eight mil, as in million?” I asked still trying to process it.
“Yeah, that’s how much you spent in the last month.”
Is rolled onto her side, away from me, so that we were facing each other.
“Anything you need to tell me?” she asked raising her eyebrow.
“How did you come up with eight million? You must have added wrong,” I knew it was a stretch, this was Is I was talking to.
“Mikey,” she said giving me a stern look.
“How much has been spent on the Sorsa Project?” I knew the number because of the reports and it was nowhere close to being even a million. It was just at five thousand so far because even with all the stuff we’ve had to buy, Is has gotten us a ton of deals.
Is gave me the ‘you’re stupid’ look.
“Where did you find the eight million?” I asked.
Is rolled back onto her stomach, ramming into me slightly. I almost toppled over her but I managed to balance myself before I fell.
“Here,” Is said jabbing her finger at the screen. I looked over her head and saw that she had my personal finances pulled up.
“Why were you in there?” I asked. It was password protected.
“I was just making sure that in a month or so, when we used up all the money your uncle gave us, that we would still have some money to use for the project. Then I realized that your expenses were really strange,” Is said quickly. Well, yeah I guess that made perfect sense to her.
“But how did you get in there?” I asked again.
“Your password was easy to break. I only had to try two things. If I didn’t figure it out I was just going to ask you,” Izzy said with a shrug. Now I was embarrassed, my password was her name.
“What was the first thing you tried?”
“Password.”
Of course.
“So how am I missing eight million?”
“I don’t know,” Is answered as her eyes frantically searched the screen. “You might be missing eight mil, but you still have tonnes of money.”
Again I felt embarrassed. I knew Izzy’s family wasn’t hurting for money, she went to a fancy private school for crying out loud, but it was still weird for her to see exactly how much I had compared to everyone else.
“That’s not what I’m worried about.” I scratched the back of my head as I thought. “Uh, does it have a memo, like where I spent the money?”
“Er…” Is opened a few windows. “No. It looks like the money wasn’t spent, just moved.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked. If money was missing from my account it would have been spent. I don’t move my money around.
“Well it’s in exact amounts, all around the same amount. There is no little cents or anything.”
“That’s odd,” I commented.
“It is,” Izzy agreed.
“So what does this mean?”
Is ignored my question. “What were you doing two days ago?”
That was an easy question. “I was at the build site with you and then when we got home we watched that movie.”
“That’s it?”
“Well I sent Diego to get the frame for your present,” I admitted.
“But it didn’t cost eight hundred thousand dollars did it?”
My jaw dropped open. “What?”
“That’s how much money disappeared two days ago.”
I just gaped at her.
I shook my head vigorously. “That has to be a mistake. I gave Jessica some money as well, so she could go shopping, but it was only five hundred.”
“You gave Jessica money?” Is asked in disgust.
I shrugged. “I need to keep her happy somehow.”
Is looked like she was going to argue further when her whole face changed and her eyes went wide. “Wait, how often do you give Jessica money?”
“About once or twice a week,” I said not seeing the significance.
“Do you know how to write a cheque properly so that it can't be altered?”
Great, now my girlfriend thought I was an idiot. “Of course I do. I’ve been having to write cheques for years.” That came with being the king.
“You wrote them in pen?”
“Yes of course Is,” I said getting annoyed now. There was nothing wrong with my cheque writing skills.
Izzy’s phone vibrated and she glanced at the screen.
“Dad wants me back in now,” she told me.
“Okay,” I said instantly disappointed. I had wasted my time with Is arguing with her. I only had so much time left before she left.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Is said giving me a quick kiss. “And can you bring your cheque book? I want to have a look at it.”
I nodded and stood up. Then I reached down and took Izzy’s hands, pulling her to her feet. She slid her laptop under her arm and her phone into her pocket. Then we walked across the grass to the castle with my arm around her waist and her head on my shoulder.
Once we were inside the castle and in the entranceway, Is turned in my arms so that she was pressed up against me.
“Night Mikey,” she whispered before giving me a much longer kiss than the one she had just given me outside. I tightened my arms around her waist, not wanting to let go so soon. Now that I had her, I didn’t want to spend any time away from her. And I doubt Chef Dermen would agree to my idea of having Is move upstairs with me.
Is pulled away from me suddenly and buried her head in my chest. I tried to figure out why but then I caught sight of her Dad standing behind her.
“Oh, uh good evening Chef Dermen,” I said sheepishly.
“Your Majesty,” Chef Dermen said with a nod. “I think it is time that Isabelle came home.” By home I knew he meant their apartment.
“Yes of course,” I agreed even though it was the last thing I wanted.
Chef Dermen raised his eyebrows at the hold I still had on his daughter. I hastily removed my arms from around Is and stepped back slightly from her. It didn’t matter that I was Chef Dermen’s boss, he was still my girlfriends father and had the ability to poison my food if I made him angry enough.
“Hi Daddy,” Izzy chirped. It was almost impossible to tell she was embarrassed by the way she acted and the way she spoke, except for the slight pink tint her cheeks had taken on.
“Come on Isabelle, it is getting late.”
Is nodded and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Bring the book tomorrow,” she reminded me before she went over to her dad.
I watched her go. Her long blonde ringlets swung gracefully behind her as she walked and hips swayed seductively. She was everything Jessica wanted to be without even trying.
~Isabelle~
The next morning I met Mikey and Diego at the car. Diego was in the drivers’ seat and Mikey was in the back. I thought about taking the passenger seat to mess with Mikey like I had yesterday, but instead I sat in the middle seat so that I could cuddle with Mikey on the way there.
“Morning Diego,” I said pointedly talking to him first. Diego chuckled when he saw what I was doing.
“Hello Is. How are you this morning?”
“Okay. My pillow is all lumpy and my dad was mad at me last night.” My pillow was Mikey. He was actually pretty comfy.
“What did you do to anger your dad?” Diego asked cutting off the protests Mikey had been about to make next to me.
“I was out a little late and then Dad caught me kissing an idiot.”
“Idiot? Really?” Mikey said before either of us could talk over him again. “Did your Dad really get mad at you? I hope not. I’ll talk to him later if that will help. And for your information I am comfortable! If I wasn’t then you wouldn’t practically be sitting one me!”
“You’re cute when you’re mad,” I said turning to face Mikey. I kissed his frown which immediately turned into a smile.
“You did that on purpose,” Mikey said as realization hit him.
I smiled innocently. “Did what?”
Mikey shook his head. “Did your dad really get mad at you?”
“No. But he had that ‘you’re my little girl’ look he has whenever he finds me like that,” I said simply. It wasn’t that Dad was made at me, just mad at the fact that I wasn’t his little girl anymore.
Mikey’s eyes widened. “How often does that happen?” I realized what I had said.
I blushed. Mikey deserved to know, but it wasn’t the most comfortable thing. “Well uh, last Christmas when Dad came to visit he caught Jamie saying goodbye to me Christmas Eve.” I thought back further. “Last summer, Dad came for a week as a surprise to me and Brian and I were in the living room.”
“He only caught you with your boyfriends once?”
“Well, um, he kinda scared them away. And he wasn’t around for long so there weren’t many times he could catch us when they weren’t scared of him. The only one he didn’t scare away was Adam, but that was because he never met him. But he did send him a very scary email, I don’t know how though.”
Mikey shook his head. “Why hasn’t he scared me away?”
I raised my eyebrow at him. “He’s tried, but he can't exactly say all the things he wants, you are still his king. From what he’s told me you don’t seem fazed at all about what he’s said.”
From the front seat I noticed Diego nodded his head in agreement.
Last night after I had gotten back to apartment with Dad, Dad had told me how Mikey had gone to him a couple of days before my birthday to ask him if it was okay for him to date me. Dad said he gave him his usual ‘don’t hurt my little girl’ speech but much more toned down. Clearly, he had given Mikey permission.
All the way to Sorsa, the three of us continued to talk. But thankfully the conversation about my various exes stopped.
When we got to Sorsa Mikey handed me his cheque book and then I went to work under the tree I usually sat under a ways away from the build sites.
I opened up the cheque book carefully and studied the first cheque. There were a lot missing from the book, so if I could find something wrong with this book it would explain why Mikey’s expenses were off.
I looked at the cheque number and it equaled the amount of strange transactions. This was defiantly the book.
The front of the cheques looked fine, so did the back of them. I held the cheque up to the sun for lack of something better to do and that’s when I noticed something.
I could clearly see the writing on front and back of the cheque with help from the light, but I could also see that words seemed to be doubled.
I ripped the corner of the cheque, promising myself that I would shred it later. It wasn’t a huge tear, because it had just been the corner, but it was enough to prove what I had suspected.
Inside the cheque was another one. Careful not to move it, I quickly found a pen and scribbled in the different spots of the cheque that was on top. Then I pulled out the one on the inside after ripping off the top one and saw that the cheque on top, was made with some special paper. It made it so that only some sections of the cheque on top were marked perfectly on the one beneath.
Those sections were the ‘for’ and signature. Everything else on the inside cheque was left blank.
After investigating the cheques a while longer I came to a conclusion.
The cheques were special made to look like real cheques, feel like them and weigh the same amount as them, and be the same thickness. The outside check was a thin material, almost like tissue paper, so that when the inside cheque was taken out it would still close to all the standards, but not noticeable at all. Unless you were looking for it like I was.
It was a good design, the ultimate way to scam money off of someone, But now the question was, who wanted Mikey’s money?
With my new found knowledge, I abandoned my tree to find Mikey to tell him about my find.
**
And who could the money theif be?
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