Free Deadly Fortune: A Contemporary Suspense Romance (Romantic Mystery And Suspense Short Stories Book 1) by Jade Allen Page A

to the conclusion that the job was never going to get any better. She knew that her superiors had low-balled her on their initial offer, counting on her desperation to get a job—any job. She knew that they had no intention of appreciably increasing her pay, or giving her any kind of promotion; she had proven herself to be too efficient to make the argument that additional responsibilities merited an increase in pay. Whenever she tentatively raised the subject, she was met with “But you’re so capable; this will only take up a few minutes here and there in your schedule.” The thought of abandoning the job, of finding something better, had occurred to her more than once—but the very real possibility that she would leave one dead-end only to step into another held her back.
    Rachel shelved the topic of the day’s work in favor of checking in on her friends for a few minutes. She glanced at the time—she still had ten minutes before she needed to start getting ready in earnest. Scrolling through her feed, Rachel frowned enviously at pictures of one friend’s exotic vacation—something she could never scratch up enough extra cash to afford—and a coworker’s new car. They can afford to bump pay for the sales team, but not for the girl practically running the place, she thought bitterly, closing out the app before her resentment could bloom out of proportion.
    She decided to rub a little more salt in the wound, and opened up her banking app, thinking that she would make a couple of plans—maybe pay a couple of bills—before she got dressed and made up for the day’s work. Logging in, Rachel went through her usual mental routine of trying to estimate just how much she should have in the bank, recalling the groceries she had bought a few days earlier, the lunch she had treated herself to after forgetting the Tupperware holding her leftovers. When the screen finished loading, she glanced at the total and her mouth fell open in shock.
    “Two million dollars? What the hell? What—how—it’s got to be a mistake,” she said, shaking her head and blinking her eyes to clear them. But the total still showed the same amount. Rachel tapped the account details option and saw, to her amazement, that it had come from a transfer, showing as posted just that morning.
    Her mind spun for a moment. It still had to be a mistake; someone had tried to send a transfer to their kid, or to a family member—maybe even a corrupt politician—and had gotten some of the digits wrong on the account number. Rachel looked at the time, wondering just how long the hold period would be for the customer service line. She chewed on her bottom lip and considered. On one hand, she absolutely had to get ready for work—she would be late if she didn’t. On the other hand, Rachel thought it was entirely possible that, assuming the transfer into her account was a mistake, she would probably face a much bigger problem later on down the line if it wasn’t corrected quickly.
    She called her boss, leaving a voicemail saying that she had to take care of a personal issue and would be a few minutes late getting in. Rachel then pulled out her debit card and dialed the number on the back of it, fidgeting in her pajamas as she entered her account information and passcode. She tapped her foot lightly on the floor as the hold music played, her heart beating faster. What if it isn’t a mistake? She thought, her brain barely—barely—daring to hope. But how she could have ended up with two million dollars in her bank account without it being a mistake of some kind was impossible to comprehend. No one she knew had that kind of money. The wealthiest of her friends and family were only making—at most—a hundred thousand or so per year.
    Her mouth was dry and she sipped at her coffee, forcing herself to breathe slowly. The customer service agent finally came on the line, and Rachel explained her dilemma. “That is…certainly an odd situation,” the woman on