My voice was loud now, making sure everyone surrounding us could hear me. That’ll show him to throw his weight around. I was fed up with older men like him not giving me the time of day. Thinking I was some spoiled brat just because I was the boss’s daughter. It didn’t matter that I was spoiled; what mattered was that he got the numbers wrong, and I spotted it. I might be the boss’s daughter, but I was sharper than his pompous ass.

Even his shiny bald head turned pink.

“Give those here.” He all but snatched the folder from me and leafed clumsily through the pages.

“I don’t know who signed off on this,” he said, finally, “but it wasn’t me.”

I burst out into laughter.

“Typical,” I snorted out. “Can’t own up to your mistakes and so you’re claiming that you had nothing to do with it? Listen, Mr. Ananda, I can put up with your rudeness for the sake of the business, but I won’t allow you to muck around with the company accounts. If this is just for my charity I can only imagine what a mess you’ve made of Fonseka Jewellers.”

Taking the financials from him, I turned and made my way directly to my father’s office. No one got away with treating Kaavindi Fonseka like that.

21

KAAVI

Two Months before the Wedding

“So, you just, like, had him fired?” Tehani asked, jealousy dripping from her voice.

I exhaled, reaching out from my ridiculously comfortable bed at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore for the glass of Moët that sat on my bedside. One of the perks of traveling out of Sri Lanka was the unapologetic day drinking.

“Fuck off, there’s no need to give me shit about it, okay? The guy was a douche. He had it coming.”

“Thaththa just agreed to it?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” I shrugged. The truth was that my father was a little harder to crack than I’d ever let Tehani know. He insisted that we couldn’t just throw out our head of finance, especially now that Mr. Sekar was gone. That it left Fonseka Jewellers far too vulnerable without someone overseeing the accounts closely. I got it, of course, but I couldn’t be the laughingstock in my own company. I had insisted, and when that didn’t work, I might have fabricated a bit of what happened to make it seem like it wasn’t negligence that caused Mr. Ananda to sign off on my report, but dishonesty. And that was one thing my father would not stand for.

“Well, who’s going to do our accounts, then?” Tehani nagged. I honestly wished she’d just shut it. The only reason she was even on this trip with me in the first place is because she’d managed to convince my mother that I shouldn’t go wedding dress shopping alone. Like I ever needed anyone else’s help. Besides, the whole point of the trip wasn’t for me to go nuts on the shopping (I mean, it would happen anyway, but it wasn’t really my motive) but to get away from the nonstop wedding planning.