Chapter 9
Julian’s hand hovered over my folder.
I put my palm on its cover. “Don’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ve been suspended from the records.”
“My folder isn’t a record system.”
“Then you won’t mind letting the board preserve it.”
“I mind you taking it.”
Marisol stepped between us—not quite blocking him, but making him choose whether to reach past her. “The folder stays with Claire. We can document its contents and arrange a neutral, time-limited review.”
Julian turned to her. “You’re proposing an audit based on a page with no context.”
“I’m proposing forty-eight hours,” Marisol said. “An independent review of the access request, transaction filing, and approval trail. No public accusation. No conclusions before we have the facts.”
The deadline sat between us. Wednesday’s closing. The retirement guarantee. A signature I had never given.
“I’ll agree,” I said. “But the reviewer answers to the board, not to Julian or Grant.”
A director gave a tight nod. Julian’s hand withdrew from my folder.
“Fine,” he said. His voice was calm; his face wasn’t. “Let’s see what your audit finds.”
The directors began filing out. Dana stayed by the wall, clutching her notebook against her chest. When the last board member passed her, she looked at me.
“I should tell you what I heard,” she said.
Julian was still near the door. “This isn’t the time.”
Dana’s shoulders stiffened. She looked past him to me.
“Chloe used to tell people that questions about Julian would become career problems,” she said. “Not always in those words. She’d say, ‘You don’t want to misunderstand him,’ or ‘You don’t want your name attached to this.’ People got the message.”
Julian’s jaw shifted. “You’re repeating gossip.”
“I’m telling Claire what employees told me,” Dana said, her voice shaking but audible. “And what I heard myself.”
For a beat, nobody moved. Then Julian picked up his phone and walked out without another word.
Dana exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath since the board session began.
“I can’t promise what they’ll do with what I say,” she told me.
“You don’t have to promise that,” I said. “Just tell the truth you know.”
Her eyes shone, but she didn’t cry. “I’m tired of deciding it’s safer to say nothing.”
The door opened again. Chloe came in alone.
Her gaze went straight to Dana. “I need to speak with Claire.”
“You can speak here,” I said.
“I need it to be private.”
Dana looked to me. I nodded, and she left, though she kept her notebook in her hands.
Chloe shut the door. The boardroom seemed smaller without the directors in it. Her watch flashed when she folded her arms.
“Why was your credential on the footage-removal request?” I asked.
“Because Julian used it.”
“You’re his executive secretary. He couldn’t use his own?”
“He could.” Her mouth tightened. “He told me to make the request. I gave him access.”
“That isn’t the same as saying he used your credential.”
“I’m telling you what happened.” She looked down at the watch. “I knew what he wanted the footage for. I did it anyway.”
It wasn’t remorse. Not yet. It was a woman measuring how much danger she stood in.
“Why tell me now?”
“Because he’s going to let them blame me. Or you. Whichever is more convenient.”
“You helped him make this mess.”
“I know.”
The admission came out flat, almost resentful. She glanced at the closed door as if Julian might appear on the other side of it.
“Meet me alone,” she said. “Not here. Not with Marisol listening.”
“I’m not meeting you somewhere you choose without knowing why.”
“Then know why first.” Her eyes met mine. “Julian told me he had a plan if the sale surfaced. He’d say you approved it before you became CEO. He’d say you were trying to take control of the company and used your new authority to cover it.”
I felt the familiar pull to ask whether Julian had ever loved me. I refused it. That question could wait. The sale could not.
“How do you know he planned to blame me?”
“Because he told me.” Her voice broke at the edge, then hardened again. “He said it would be easy. Your signature was already on the acknowledgment form. He’d make the rest look like a misunderstanding.”
“And you believed him?”
“I believed he could protect me.”
The answer was small and ugly and, in its way, honest.
“How long?”
“Almost a year.”
A year of calls he took in the hall. A year of explanations I had chosen to accept because I trusted the man making them. I looked at the watch, then at Chloe.
“Was that his mother’s birthday gift?”
“No. He bought it for me.”
“He told me he bought it for his mother.”
“I know.” Chloe swallowed. “He said it was easier than telling you the truth.”
The watch no longer looked like a careless insult. It looked like part of a transaction.
Chloe reached into her bag and set a folded packet on the table. “Here’s the original receipt. And the message he sent me.”
I didn’t touch it yet. “Why give it to me?”
“Because if I’m the only one holding it, he can take it back. Or say I made it up.”
That wasn’t an answer to whether she would testify. She wasn’t offering repentance; she was trying to survive. I could see that plainly, and still the evidence mattered.
I opened the message first. Julian’s name sat above the familiar clipped sentences.
Use the company account. Put it through the transaction file. Nobody will look twice.
Below it was an attachment: a receipt packet with the watch’s model, the pearl face, the tiny sapphire, and the company purchasing account. The first page showed the watch charge. The next showed an electronic filing fee for the approval resolution bearing my copied signature.
I checked the account number twice.
The same account had paid for both.
For a moment, the room fell away—the board table, Chloe’s watch, the cold memory of matcha soaking my dress. There was only Julian’s instruction, preserved in his own words, and the account tying his private gift to the forged approval.
Chloe watched me read. “Now do you believe me?”
“I believe the evidence needs to be verified,” I said. “I don’t know what I believe about you.”
Her face tightened, but she didn’t argue.
I slid the message back across the table. “The board gets a copy. The original stays preserved.”
She nodded once, as if that was the best she could expect.
May you like
I looked again at the payment record.
The same company account had paid for the watch—and for filing the approval Julian meant to use against me.
