Chương 5 - The Secretary Who Knew Too MuchAdrian Vale owned forty-three legitimate companies.
And probably twice as many illegitimate ones.
I knew because I had spent years untangling his financial fingerprints without ever realizing I might someday become one of his targets.
Thomas poured himself whiskey.
Larkin didn’t offer him one.
“Explain,” Larkin said.
Thomas took a drink.
“Three months ago, someone contacted me about an old Meridian ledger.”
“Who?”
“An intermediary.”
“Name.”
“I never got one.”
Larkin’s eyes hardened.
Thomas sighed.
“They wanted five million.”
“For what?”
“A document proving Gregory siphoned money from the organization.”
My stomach tightened.
“Your father.”
Thomas glanced at me.
“Yes.”
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“And you said nothing.”
“To who? Larkin? So he could decide my father was a traitor?”
“He was dead.”
“That doesn’t make the consequences disappear.”
Larkin said, “Did you pay?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted proof first.”
“And?”
“The intermediary sent one scanned page.”
“The page we received tonight,” I said.
Thomas nodded.
“So Adrian has the ledger?”
“I think so.”
Larkin stared at him.
“You think.”
“His people started buying debt linked to Meridian shell companies two months ago.”
I understood immediately.
“He’s tracing ownership.”
Both men looked at me.
“What?” Thomas asked.
“If he can map the old structures, he can identify dormant accounts.”
Larkin nodded slowly.
“Accounts worth how much?”
I did the calculation mentally.
“If the ledger contains everything? Hundreds of millions.”
Thomas stared.
“You knew that?”
“I know numbers.”
“No. You know our numbers.”
Larkin looked at me.
There was something new in his expression.
Respect.
Maybe fear.
I continued.
“If Adrian exposes those accounts, he can force asset seizures, trigger investigations, pressure partners, and collapse your legitimate businesses.”
Thomas sat down.
For once, he didn’t have a joke.
Larkin asked me, “Can you reconstruct the ledger?”
“Some of it.”
“How much?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“How badly people lied.”
Thomas laughed.
“Then we’re doomed.”
I ignored him.
“The old records may still exist in archived tax filings, insurance statements, shipping manifests, property deeds.”
Larkin said, “How long?”
“Days.”
“We may not have days.”
I looked at him.
“Then give me access.”
“To what?”
“Everything.”
Thomas shook his head.
“Absolutely not.”
I turned.
“You broke into my apartment.”
“I sent someone.”
“Wonderful distinction.”
“You’re still an employee.”
“And apparently the only employee capable of finding the ledger before Adrian uses it.”
Thomas looked at Larkin.
“You can’t seriously be considering this.”
Larkin answered immediately.
“She gets access.”
Thomas stood.
“She could destroy us.”
Larkin looked at me.
“She could have done that years ago.”
That stopped him.
It stopped me too.
Larkin continued.
“She didn’t.”
For the first time, I understood something dangerous.
Larkin trusted me.
Not completely.
But more than he trusted his own cousin.
We returned to Steves Holdings at 2:17 a.m.
The building was nearly empty.
Larkin opened a secure archive room I had never been allowed to enter.
Rows of locked cabinets.
Encrypted servers.
Old paper files.
“This is everything?” I asked.
“Everything I know about.”
“That’s not comforting.”
He handed me a keycard.
“Penelope.”
“Yes?”
“If you find something about my father…”
“I’ll tell you.”
He nodded.
“If you find something about Thomas…”
“I’ll tell you.”
Another nod.
“And if I find something about you?”
He held my gaze.
“Tell me that too.”
For the next nine hours, I worked.
No makeup.
Larkin’s shirt under a borrowed jacket.
Coffee after coffee.
Numbers began becoming a language.
Meridian Allied.
East Coast Procurement.
Albion Marine.
Three shell structures linked through insurance premiums.
Payments routed to a trust in Nevada.
Then another account.
Then another.
At 8:46 a.m., I found something impossible.
A transfer from Meridian Allied to a corporation called Woods Financial Consulting.
My father’s name.
Two million dollars.
Three days before his death.
My hands went cold.
Larkin appeared beside me.
“What?”
I pointed.
He read the transaction.
“That looks like payment.”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my father died with less than twelve thousand dollars in savings.”
“Could the account have been hidden?”
“No.”
“Penelope—”
“No.”
I opened the supporting documentation.
Then stopped breathing.
The beneficiary authorization contained my father’s signature.
But I knew that signature.
He taught me to copy it when I was a child.
The W always leaned right.
This one leaned left.
“Forgery.”
Larkin leaned closer.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
I searched the metadata.
Authorization created by a user ID.
G.STEVES.
Gregory.
Thomas’s father.
Thomas entered behind us.
He saw the screen.
His face changed.
I turned.
“Your father framed mine.”
Thomas stared.
“For what?”
“For stealing two million dollars.”
He shook his head.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know the signature was forged.”
“Maybe—”
“Don’t.”
My voice was calm.
That made it worse.
“Your father forged my father’s signature three days before he died.”
Thomas looked at Larkin.
Then back at me.
“I didn’t know.”
For once, I believed him.
Then a security alarm sounded.
The archive room lights flashed red.
Larkin grabbed my arm.
“What happened?”
An automated voice announced a network breach.
Screens went black.
Then came back.
On every monitor appeared a single message.
GOOD MORNING, PENELOPE.
YOU FOUND THE FIRST LIE.
NOW FIND OUT WHO KILLED YOUR FATHER.
Below it was an address.
Brooklyn.
And a time.
Midnight.
Thomas whispered, “Adrian.”
I stared at the message.
Maybe.
But I noticed something neither of them did.
The punctuation.
Two spaces after every period.
I knew someone who typed that way.
Someone in our office.
Someone who had sent me hundreds of emails.
May you like
And that meant Adrian Vale might not be the person hunting me.
The enemy might be standing much closer.
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