Chapter 8 - My Name on the Transfer
I spent the next forty-eight hours remembering every person who might have touched my computer.
Dad had access to the executive floor.
Gregory supervised the finance team.
Vanessa occasionally borrowed assistants' workstations because she claimed her own laptop was always broken.
But I refused to accuse anybody without evidence.
Nina hired an independent forensic team with the directors' authorization.
They secured copies of the relevant systems and documented the chain of custody.
I didn't touch a single company device.
That decision saved me later.
The transaction record showed my credentials had been used from an executive office terminal while I was at my rehearsal dinner.
A visitor badge had been created that afternoon under a false name.
The badge photograph was blurry.
The security camera in the corridor had gone offline for nineteen minutes.
"Convenient," Daniel said.
"Suspicious," I replied.
"Not proof."
My phone rang while we were reviewing the timeline.
It was Mom.
"Your father is barely sleeping," she said.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Then fix this."
I closed my eyes.
"What do you want me to fix?"
"Give him the voting shares."
I laughed once in disbelief.
"They aren't his."
"You're ruining your sister's future."
"Mom, my name appears on a payment I never approved."
She went silent.
"Did you know about that?" I asked.
"I don't involve myself in business."
"You involved yourself in my wedding."
She hung up.
Two hours later, a newspaper columnist published an anonymous allegation that I had embezzled company money to finance my ceremony.
The piece cited unnamed executive sources.
I looked at my wedding receipts, every one paid from our own accounts.
Then I saw a detail that made me freeze.
The article named the exact amount of the forged transaction.
That figure wasn't in any public document.
Someone inside the company was feeding the press.
At midnight, Daniel sat beside me and showed me a message from my mother.
Please make Claire stop before her father does something desperate.
I read it twice.
May you like
For the first time, Mom sounded frightened of the man she had spent years defending.
