CONQUEST: The Dungeon Core Gambit Book One (SAMPLE)

Chapter 1

He never expected to be a snitch. But then again, he never expected to be hogtied and naked in his apartment either. Both courtesy of his nemesis, Bobbi Nox.

The current predicament of thirty-one-year-old Markos Turloch began when the owner of a local community bank decided to put his twenty-six-year-old niece in charge of the Internal Audit Department where Markos worked.

Obvious nepotism aside, this blue-eyed, blonde-haired beauty had a freshly minted MBA in Accounting. And it was clear that Bobbi was being groomed to become the CEO of the company one day.

Unfortunately, Bobbi also proved to be a two-faced bitch. Oh, whenever she turned on the charm, she was gregarious and everyone (aside from Markos) loved her. But when she flipped over to bitch mode, watch out!

Since Bobbi was Markos' immediate supervisor, she often vented her frustration on him. She would call him into the office for any real or imaginary mistake in his report. Sometimes, she would even pretend to be an English professor and made grammatical corrections in his reports.

Markos never understood why she singled him out for harassment. Perhaps she was physically repulsed by him. After all, he stood just a shade over five feet tall, with a thin build and a receding hairline (already). Yes, Markos will be the first to admit that he was not physically attractive. But he was always polite to his co-workers and no one ever had any complaint about him besides Bobbi.

Since the two worked in the same department, Bobbi had to walk by his cubicle every day in order to reach her office. She would often make rude or snide comments within his earshot.

Furthermore, Bobbie belittled him and made derogatory comments about him to his co-workers at the bank. She even pondered aloud if Markos was gay.

Sure enough, the daily innuendo and gossip against Markos slowly but surely turned the company's opinion of him from favorable to unfavorable. Even worse, Bobbie exploited the annual performance review in mid-December and made false but critical comments in his file regarding his work performance.

When Markos receive a copy of his annual performance report, he was livid. He almost stormed into her office to strangle the little witch. But what saved her that day was happenstance--the owner of the bank visited Bobbie's office and they were having a casual, but happy conversation.

From that day forward, Markos decided to dig deeper into certain, suspicious accounts that he came across during his internal audit work. As his supervisor, Bobbi told him which client accounts to audit. However, during his frequent trips to her office, he saw very suspicious accounts on her computer screen.

The clients were LLCs located in infamous tax havens countries such as Panama and Barbados, to name two. Even worse, the accounts had transactions which involved huge sums of money; millions of dollars were deposited one day and transferred out the next day.

Markos began to suspect that the bank was involved in illegal money laundering. If so, then it made sense for the owner to insert his own family member to keep an eye on the Internal Audit Department, which could unravel these illegal transactions.

Markos spent the next few months making secret copies of these suspicious transactions. Additionally, he checked to see if anyone at the bank had filed suspicious activity reports regarding these transactions, as required by federal law. Yet, he found no such filings by the bank.

Thus, Markos endured the daily torment from his boss while secretly gathering documents. The next spring, he called in sick one morning and then drove to the local FBI office with copies of these documents. After several interviews, the FBI launched a raid against the bank.