Chapter 10
I saved Chloe’s message and the receipt packet to the drive in my laptop bag, then opened the board archive on my laptop. I had barely dragged the files into the upload window when the screen went gray.
ACCESS REVOKED.
I tried once more. The same words appeared, clean and indifferent, as if the machine had caught me stealing something.
Dana stood behind my chair, one hand pressed to the strap of her bag. “They shut you out before you could send it?”
“They shut me out before I could even try.”
She glanced at the receipt packet. “Then we find another way to prove it.”
Marisol had been waiting in the boardroom, where the last of the directors’ coffee had gone cold. When I showed her the screen, she didn’t ask me to try a different password. She simply closed my laptop.
“Julian has filed a fraud complaint against you,” she said. “His allies are asking for an emergency session. They want the board to hear it before the independent review can get started.”
The words took a moment to settle. The same man whose message instructed Chloe to use the company account was trying to make me the thief.
“What exactly are they accusing me of?” I asked.
“That you authorized the sale, then used your new authority to cover your tracks.” Marisol held my gaze. “They’re presenting the copied signature as proof.”
Dana’s fingers tightened around her bag strap. “But the filing fee is on the receipt.”
“It is,” I said. “And I want more than Chloe’s copy.”
Marisol nodded. “Then get something the vendor can verify independently.”
I looked at the receipt. The watch’s pearl face and blue sapphire were listed in tidy black type, as if the purchase had been innocent. “Dana, will you call them with me?”
She hesitated—not because she doubted me, I thought, but because she knew every call could become another thing someone twisted.
“Of course,” she said.
We used Marisol’s office phone. Dana read the invoice number from Chloe’s packet while I listened, my palm damp against the edge of the desk. After a brief hold, a representative asked us to confirm the item and purchasing account. Marisol identified herself as a board representative overseeing the independent review. The representative said she could not discuss a customer’s account in detail, but could verify the invoice and send a duplicate record to the review contact.
“Was this watch paid for with a Whitmore Holdings account?” I asked.
A pause. A few clicks.
“The duplicate will show the payment method on file,” the representative said. “I can confirm the invoice number matches our records.”
It wasn’t the whole case. It wasn’t even proof of who had worn the watch. But it was a record that had not come from Chloe, and had not passed through Julian’s hands.
When the call ended, Dana let out a breath she’d been holding.
“I thought if we could just put the documents in front of the board, they’d have to see what was there,” she said.
“They still might,” Marisol replied. “But Julian is making sure they see his version first.”
My phone vibrated on the desk. Chloe’s name appeared on the screen.
I made a recording. I’m sending it to you now.
The audio arrived a few seconds later. I played it with the office door shut. Chloe’s voice sounded smaller than it had in the elevator, but the words were plain. She said Julian had instructed her to request the west-corridor footage removal, that she had given him access, and that he told her to use the company account for the watch and put it through the transaction file. She admitted she knew enough to understand what he was doing—and did it anyway.
When the recording ended, the silence felt heavier than the sound.
“She’s not pretending she’s innocent,” Dana said.
“No.” I looked at the phone in my hand. “She’s trying to make sure she isn’t the only one left holding the blame.”
Marisol’s expression softened, but only for an instant. “That may still help establish what happened.”
“It may,” I said. “But she’ll have to stand by it when people can hear her.”
I sent Chloe one message: Keep the original. Don’t delete anything. Will you say this to the board?
The dots appeared, vanished, then appeared again.
I will.
I read the answer twice. It wasn’t an apology, and it didn’t repair anything. But for the first time, Chloe had put her own name beside the truth.
Marisol’s phone rang. She listened without interrupting, and the muscles in her jaw tightened.
“Grant’s counsel,” she said when she hung up. “Northline is accelerating the closing. Early Wednesday. Unless the company objects.”
“Can the company object now?” Dana asked.
“Not without authority to act.” Marisol looked toward the dark windows. “And they’re trying to make Claire the person no one trusts to ask for it.”
The thought landed with a physical weight. If I stepped aside, Julian could call it proof. If I refused, he could call that proof, too. For one sharp second, I wanted to be anywhere but in that office—with my marriage turned into evidence, my employees watching to see whether I would disappear, and my name already being carried into rooms I couldn’t enter.
Then I thought of Dana’s missing statement. Of the false signature. Of the retirement guarantee that had never appeared in the transfer packet.
“I’m not resigning to make his story easier,” I said.
Marisol reached for the vendor’s confirmation details. “Then we preserve every piece, and we make them hear it.”
A knock sounded at the outer door. One of the building couriers stood there with a stiff envelope, asking for me by name.
I signed for it. The board seal was pressed into the flap.
Inside was a formal notice accusing me of approving the West Campus sale and demanding my resignation before the emergency session.
May you like
At the bottom, beneath the board secretary’s signature, someone had written a deadline in blue ink:
Respond before the vote.
