to enjoy every minute of my enslavement as his provider of walks, treats, and affection. If I lost my foot, it would be a worthy sacrifice. I churned through the majority of the outstanding invoices, breathing a sigh of relief that none of them seemed to be infected with any form of insanity. A knock at my door stirred the sleeping beasts, and Edgar Allan Paw issued a low growl. I reached down and scratched behind his ears to convince him there was no danger. “Come in.”
My boss cracked open the door. “Did I just hear the dog growl?”
“Apparently, this is his space now, and if you could bring him the appropriate sacrifice, he might forgive you for potentially being a threat to my office.” I chuckled and gave him another stroke before giving Lenore a rub, too. “I think he’s figured out I’m not going to hurt him.”
Either he was satisfied Garret meant no harm or he decided it wasn’t worth the effort, because Edgar Allan Paw resumed napping on my foot.
“Good. I’m glad he’s settling in with you. Truth be told, if he wasn’t going home with you, he’d probably be going home with me, and I have no idea how I’d deal with a second cat because my wife’s mildly allergic, but she can’t say no to rescues, either. Thank you for sparing me from having to tell my wife we would be having a kitten to add to her allergies to go with the cat we already have.”
“It seems Edgar Allan Paw has a line of people wanting to take him home.”
“Yeah, my sister has an eye for the suckers. I’m a sucker, Jacob’s a sucker, and you’re now a confirmed sucker.”
“It’s true, I really am. What can I do for you?”
“It was deceptively quiet in here, so I wanted to check in.”
“I’m almost done with the outstanding invoices, and they look clean. I’ll be sending the digital copies back to the firm today so they can be paid and give them instructions on how to record their payment status so we don’t lose extra time dealing with them. Some of these will be due in the next few days, and I’d rather not disrupt their operations more than necessary. I don’t usually audit in-process accounts, but I can work around it to make sure everything is correct.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t too thrilled that there were open invoices in the lot, but with your work history, I figured you could handle it. If you find any past due, please let them know right away so they can handle it. I was warned the accounting might be bad enough to have past due invoices.”
“So far, everything has been really, really tidy. The issues aren’t with Miss Meltrew’s men, but rather with things outside of her control at this point in time. That doesn’t mean I won’t find anything questionable once I start going through paid invoices, but I’m starting to hope I might get through the outstanding invoices without wanting to cry, commit any felonies, or otherwise lose what’s left of my mind.”
“I like that you are openly acknowledging this job has resulted in at least some parts of your mind leaving the premises. To be fair, I’m pretty sure there’s not much left of my mind following the general description of this job. While this isn’t going to influence your work right now, it seems that there might be a bigger issue in that company that will need to be addressed.”
“Please tell me they weren’t operating an illegal sex operation of some sort. The inclusion of prostitutes and sex toys could easily indicate that.”
“Not quite.”
“Then what?”
My boss sighed and bowed his head. “I don’t want to say it.”
“Now I really need to know.”
“Insider trading of publicly owned adult entertainment companies. So, technically, while it involves the sex industry, they’re corporate firms operating legally, although there’s the possibility of illegal activities.”
“That would explain the prostitutes and sex toys, though,” I replied.
“Unfortunately.”
“There are publicly traded adult entertainment companies?”
“Yep.”
I frowned, my brows furrowing. “But why?”
“Sex sells, and people have faith in sex selling, so they perceive it as a safe stock to invest in.”
I considered that and shrugged when I realized that was a damned good reason for keeping stock in an adult entertainment company. “So, this is going to be even worse than I thought?”
“It’s going to be even worse than I thought, and I went in expecting it to be pretty bad. The company management wants a good