Wednesdays, she looked at community projects: shelters, soup kitchens, pantries, youth centers, senior centers—all of them, for the moment, in the greater Philadelphia area, but Danielle had already made plans to expand out into Pennsylvania, and later the rest of the country, targeting the lowest-income areas first.
Thursday was for entrepreneurial funding, as she considered it: small businesses in Philadelphia that needed funds to open, organizations for artists and creatives, things of that nature that needed a hand up to get established.
Fridays, she had more to do—not only would she come up with something for that day of the week, but also the weekends: the day itself was dedicated to “bigger” projects: hospitals that served the community on a not-for-profit basis, legal aid organizations, things of that nature.
For the weekends, Danielle had already figured out how to allocate the money without having to put as much thought into it, in a way that her new boss would approve of: at the end of Friday, she would have a list of ten people who would get tax-free trust funds of one hundred thousand dollars each, most of them either elderly or disabled.
That would be—to start with—more than five hundred people who would have an extra ten thousand dollars a year for the next ten years. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something that, Danielle knew, would change those people’s lives. When she went up to a million dollars a day, that would mean that she could give the same small change to twenty people a week. And Victor had hinted that he would eventually—depending on how much more money he started to make a year—move up to two million to spend per day, maybe even up to five million, eventually. That was a lot of people and organizations she could help.
Danielle’s phone buzzed and she thought—for a moment—that it was Victor letting her know his meeting with the shareholders had ended early. She grabbed it up from the drawer she kept it in, but the notification showed that the text message had come from her brother, Sam. Hey sis—when’s your lunch break? Danielle frowned.
She hadn’t told Sam about her new job, and she didn’t want to tell him about it—not really. Even if Victor wasn’t involved with the Sokolovs anymore except on a social level; she didn’t want to deal with any lecture on loyalty or anything like that. She was pretty sure that Sam would want her to be his cover for something going on later in the week—and she didn’t want to do that, either. She was making enough working for Victor that she didn’t need the extra cash that Sam would give her for it, and she just flat-out didn’t want to have any involvement in Bey family business at all anymore.
I’m out at 12:30, but I might have to work through lunch, Danielle replied. I’ve got a project the boss assigned me. Technically it wasn’t a lie; it was just not what Sam would immediately assume it meant.
I wanted to take you out to lunch! Come on, you can take 20 minutes, can’t you? That was another perk of her job, Danielle thought with a smile: her lunch breaks were one hour, minimum—and that was if she was having lunch by herself. If she and Victor were having lunch together it might last two hours.
Her previous job had had a “generous” forty-minute lunch break, most of which Danielle generally spent at her desk anyway. She sighed. Sam would know that something was up if she didn’t meet him for lunch like usual.
Where are we going? I’ll meet you there. Danielle thought—hoped—that she would be able to put off Sam finding out about her new job for at least a little while longer that way. She made a mental note to tell Victor that she wouldn’t be available for lunch, whether or not he was looking for her.
Let’s meet at Bud & Marilyn’s, Sam suggested, and Danielle knew that he planned to ask her to cover for him on some project or another; it wasn’t a quick bite to eat to catch up—which would have been at Sonny’s or Buena Onda. It was a slightly pricier meal he wanted to treat her to, which meant he would want a favor.
It was closer to Danielle’s old job than it was to her new one—but that would work to her benefit, ultimately. She could keep to her story of needing to leave in twenty minutes or so and have plenty of time to get back.
Then again, apart from having a “meeting” with Vic, it’s not as though he’s strict about my hours on the clock. There was not even, technically, a clock for her to use to keep track of her hours; she was salaried, and between coming in a few minutes early, and already—even one week in—staying late a few times, it wasn’t as though she was shirking her duties.
I can just about swing that, but you’d better order for me before I get there—I’ll only have about twenty minutes, she wrote her brother back. Danielle knew that he knew what she would want: the fried chicken sandwich with fries, a share of the crispy cheese curds, and a Wile E. Coyote to drink. He could easily order for her, so that her food would be ready to come up when she arrived. That—she hoped—would ensure that the visit was fairly short.
That brought her back to the problem of why her brother wanted to see her: she was certain that it would be a request for her to act as his cover for some activity—dealing, or selling something else, or casing some business, she wasn’t sure and it didn’t really matter—and she would need to find a way to turn him down without making him aware of the big change in her circumstances.
She had no doubt that Victor would disapprove of her having anything to do with one of the syndicates; and even if she wasn’t necessarily interested in having her private life dictated by her boss, she had jumped at the opportunity as much because it would keep her from needing the extra cash that Sam offered her as anything else.
“I’ll figure it out,” she told herself, setting her phone aside when Sam had confirmed that he would put her order in before she met with him, and turning her attention back to the work at hand. She tried not to lie to family, but there were certain things she had to keep separate. She had taken the job to make the final, complete move away from doing anyt
hing with the Bey family—so she would tell Sam that she wasn’t willing to take the risks anymore, even as minimal as they were. He would probably be disappointed, but he couldn’t blame her.
Chapter8
“Who’s that new girl you have working for you?” Victor shrugged off Nikolai’s question, reasoning—mentally—that it wasn’t really the man’s business.
“Someone I found to help me spend my money,” he said with a smile. Nikolai chuckled.
“You don’t need to hire someone to do that,” Nikolai said. “Find a good Russian girl, or—hell—find some promising woman from any of the countries you like, sponsor her to be a citizen, and marry her. She’ll spend your money faster than you could imagine.” Victor rolled his eyes at that suggestion, knowing where it came from—Nikolai’s wife was an immigrant who had been looking for a green card, and Nikolai and she had an “understanding.” She was okay with his mafia activity, he only good-naturedly griped about her spending all his money.
“I just thought that I have more money than anyone could ever use,” Victor said. “And I decided there’s no point in being a rich corpse.” Nikolai looked at him more seriously.
“You’re not going to leave the business or anything, are you?” Victor shook his head.
“The more money I make the more I can put back out there into the world,” he said with a grin.
“I guess,” Nikolai said with a disbelieving shrug. “I can’t even imagine feeling guilty about being successful.” Victor laughed.
“It isn’t guilt about being successful,” he told the man. “It’s knowing that there are tons of people—people who were like me before I got here—who could be just as successful as I am, maybe. If they could get the chance. The Sokolovs took a chance on me, didn’t they?” Nikolai considered that for a moment and then nodded.
“From that angle I can see it,” Nikolai said. “Though we’re more in the business of loans, not just giving people cash. You’re gonna put us out if you go at that too hard.” Victor shook his head, smiling still.
“The poor are always with you,” he quoted—the Sokolov family patriarch was a very devout man. Nikolai raised an eyebrow, but he caught the point.