Chapter 4 - The Audit BeginsBy 7:55 AM the next morning, I was seated at the head of the mahogany conference room table on the forty-second floor of the Vance & Sterling building. A steaming cup of black coffee sat to my right, alongside a leather-bound portfolio containing every single forensic audit trail I had quietly compiled over the past fourteen months.
At precisely 8:00 AM, the frosted glass door swung open.
Ethan walked in, looking like a man who hadn’t slept a wink. His hair was disheveled, his Tom Ford suit was unpressed, and the arrogant swagger that usually preceded him was entirely gone. Behind him hurried Marcus, Sterling Dynamics’ pale, terrified CFO, carrying a heavy laptop bag.
“Claire,” Ethan breathed, rushing toward the table. “What the hell is the meaning of this? Do you have any idea what happened yesterday? People were whispering! My mother had to be sedated!”
“Sit down, Ethan,” I said, not even looking up from my papers.
“You can’t just freeze our operating accounts!” he shouted, slamming both palms onto the table. “We have payroll on Friday! We have vendor contracts due! You’re destroying everything we built!”
“We didn't build this, Ethan,” I said calmly, raising my eyes to meet his bloodshot gaze. “I funded it. You managed to burn through six million dollars of seed capital in eighteen months while outsourcing your core engineering to a ghost firm run by your brother-in-law. Shall we review the ledger, or would you prefer Marcus to walk us through the disappearing R&D grants?”
Marcus swallowed hard, avoiding Ethan’s murderous glare as he nervously opened his laptop. “E-Ethan,” Marcus muttered, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. “She... she has the internal transfer logs. All of them. Even the ones from the secondary accounts.”
Ethan spun around, jabbing a finger at his CFO. “You gave her the keys?”
“I didn't have to,” I intervened, leaning back in my leather chair. “Marcus has a fiduciary duty to report corporate fraud, Ethan. When I presented him with the evidence of your personal withdrawals from the corporate treasury last week, he made the correct legal choice.”
May you like
Ethan’s face turned a violent shade of crimson. He looked like a cornered animal, desperate, humiliated, and completely stripped of his usual corporate armor. He rounded on me, his voice dropping into a venomous hiss. “You planned this. You wanted an excuse to humiliate me. You probably staged that whole thing with the dress just so you’d have a reason to pull the rug out!”
“Staged what?” I asked, my voice cutting through his hysteria like a razor. “Staged your mother handing my heirloom ring to your mistress while you stood there rolling your eyes? Ethan, you underestimate your own incompetence. You didn't need my help to destroy your life; you managed that entirely on your own.”
