Chapter 4 - The Architect
The implication of the tax documents was terrifying. Adrian had spent our entire eight-year marriage slowly bleeding my father's company dry, building a golden parachute while manufacturing the perfect weapon to ensure he was never caught.
"If we take this to the police now," my father said, leaning back in his leather chair, "the SEC will freeze Valeon’s assets. The stock will tank. And because the shell company is in your name, you'll be indicted before we can prove the signature is a forgery. Financial crimes take years to untangle. Adrian knows this. That's why he was so confident last night."
"We need the original file," I said. "The unencrypted source code of the forgery. If I can prove Vanessa doctored the PDFs on a company server, the SEC will look at her, not me."
I left my father’s office and drove straight to Valeon headquarters. My security badge—which Adrian thought was deactivated—still granted me access to the executive floor.
The suite was mostly empty, the staff still buzzing about the scandal from the night before. I walked past Adrian's corner office and slipped into Vanessa’s workspace. Her computer was locked, but her desk drawers were not. I dug through the files, looking for physical backup drives.
Under a stack of requisition forms, I found a leather-bound notebook. It was filled with handwritten schedules, IP addresses, and routing numbers.
But what caught my eye was a folded piece of Valeon letterhead tucked into the back cover. I pulled it out. It was a drafted employment contract.
Vanessa Reed - Chief Financial Officer.
The effective date was tomorrow.
May you like
But the signature authorizing her promotion wasn't Adrian's. It was a signature from Richard Sterling, the primary investor of Valeon’s largest competitor, Apex Dynamics.
I stared at the paper, a cold realization settling over me. Adrian wasn't the mastermind. He was the mark.
