Chapter 2 - The Morning AuditThe digital clock on my nightstand flashed 6:00 a.m.
I hadn't slept a wink. I had spent the remaining hours of the night sitting in the leather chair, staring at Khloe’s notebook pages and analyzing every transaction she had mapped out. By dawn, the puzzle was painfully clear: the lieutenant who supposedly stole the cash was just a pawn. The real betrayal ran deeper, right into the inner circle of Costa Logistics.
Khloe stirred beneath the blanket.
Her eyes fluttered open, blinking against the morning light filtering through the heavy drapes. For a split second, she looked disoriented, staring up at the intricate crown molding of my ceiling. Then, reality hit her like a physical blow.
Her breath caught. Her eyes widened in absolute, frozen terror as she realized where she was—and more importantly, who was sitting across the room watching her.
Khloe scrambled backward against the headboard, pulling the cashmere blanket up to her chin like a shield.
“Mr. Costa,” she gasped, her voice raspy with sleep and panic. “I—I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to... Paulie said to bring the permits upstairs, and I got confused by the hallway, and I just sat down for a second, I swear to God I didn’t touch anything—!”
“Quiet, Khloe,” I said, standing up. My voice was low, devoid of anger, but heavy with a gravity that made her freeze mid-sentence.
I walked slowly across the room, picking up the notebook from the desk, and held it out so she could see the pages.
Her face drained of every last trace of color. She looked like she had just been handed a death warrant.
“You’ve been tracking the discrepancies in the Slip 4 manifests for three weeks,” I stated flatly.
Khloe swallowed hard, her lower lip trembling slightly. She didn't deny it. Instead, she dropped her gaze to her lap, her fingers gripping the fabric of the blanket until her knuckles turned white.
“If you hadn't flagged those accounts,” I continued, stepping closer, “the IRS would have frozen our primary assets by noon today. More importantly, someone inside my organization was setting me up to take the fall for federal embezzlement.”
Khloe looked up, genuine confusion replacing the stark terror in her brown eyes. “You... you aren't going to fire me?”
“Fire you?” I let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “Khloe, you just saved my company from a federal indictment. But you also just painted a massive target on your back. Care to explain why a girl drowning in student loans is playing amateur detective against high-level syndicate capos?”
May you like
She took a shaky breath, pulled her knees to her chest, and finally looked me straight in the eye for the first time in two years.
“Because three weeks ago,” Khloe whispered, “they threatened my brother at his college dorm. They said unless I altered the shipping weights on the manifest files, he wouldn't graduate. I couldn't let them ruin his life... so I decided to find out who was pulling the strings before they used me to bury you.”
Related Stories
