Chapter 3 - The Midnight Audit
The Vanguard Group. They were notorious vultures, buying up distressed luxury properties, stripping them of their assets, and selling them for parts. If Thomas was signing papers tomorrow, it meant he had somehow diluted my voting shares.
“I need a computer, Marcus,” I said, stripping off the wine-stained sweater and pulling a dark turtleneck from my duffel bag. “One that isn't connected to the Sterling internal network. And I need the physical ledger from the accounting office. The one Thomas thinks he locked away.”
Marcus nodded rapidly. “Julian keeps a backup hard drive of the unedited financials in a floor safe in his office. I know the combination. He uses his anniversary date with his real wife.”
I paused, staring at Marcus. “His real wife?”
“Yes, ma'am. The woman in the lobby—Chloe—is an heiress to a plastics fortune. Julian has been stringing her along for her money, but he’s still legally married to a woman in Denver. Your uncle has been using that to blackmail him into cooking the books.”
It was worse than I thought. The rot went all the way to the foundation.
“Get me that hard drive, Marcus. If we’re going to war tomorrow, I need ammunition.”
For the next six hours, I sat at the small desk in the standard suite, poring over the stolen data Marcus had retrieved. The numbers were staggering. Thomas hadn't just been embezzling; he had been taking massive loans against the property’s equity, funneling the money into offshore accounts under dummy LLCs.
By devaluing the property on paper, he had triggered a hidden clause in the corporate bylaws—a clause that allowed the board to force a sale in the event of catastrophic financial failure. Thomas had manufactured a crisis to steal my company.
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At 4:00 AM, my burner phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number. Meet me by the ski lifts. Come alone. - J.
Julian. The rat was cornered, and he was looking for a way out. I grabbed my heavy winter coat, slipped a silver pocketknife into my boot—a habit from my grandfather—and headed out into the freezing Aspen night.
