Page 27 of Ruthless Vow
“But?”
“But when you compare across accounts.” She pulls another ledger close, flips to a marked page. “These three vendors are the same entity. Different names, different addresses, but the payment patterns are identical. Someone’s been inflating costs by about eight percent and routing the difference through shell accounts.”
I lean closer. Study the numbers she’s highlighting. She’s right. The pattern is there, subtle but unmistakable once you know where to look.
“You found this in a week?”
“I found this in three days. I spent the rest of the time confirming it.”
Her voice has changed. Faster now, animated, the careful neutrality falling away. This is her in her element. This is what she does.
“There’s more.”
She pulls out her notepad.
“The timing of the payments clusters around specific dates. Three days after legitimate transactions, every time. It’sdesigned to look like normal cash flow, but it’s too consistent. Real business isn’t this clean.”
“Who has access to these accounts?”
“That’s the interesting part.” She taps a line of figures. “The authorization signatures vary. But there’s one name that appears on every single inflated invoice.”
She looks up at me. Her mouth is a flat line, brows drawn tight. The look of someone carrying a blade she doesn’t want to use.
“I don’t want to accuse anyone without more evidence. But someone in your organization has been skimming. And they’ve been doing it for at least two years.”
The implications settle over me like cold water.
Two years of betrayal under my roof. Under my father’s roof before that. I never saw it.
But she did. She walked into my study without permission, sat down at my desk, and found in a week what I’ve missed for years.
Fuck.
I look at her. The reading glasses dangling from her fingers. The pen tucked behind her ear. The notes in handwriting tighter and more precise than any of my captains’.
Not a transaction. Not a placeholder. Not furniture.
A weapon I didn’t know I had.
And now my hands won’t unclench.
“Keep looking.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. “Whatever you need. Access, resources, time. Find the source.”
Her eyes widen. She wasn’t expecting that.
“You’re serious.”
“I don’t make offers twice.”
She studies me, scanning my face the way she scanned those columns. Looking for the discrepancy. The hidden line item.
I should leave it there. Walk away. Keep the distance I’ve maintained for seven days.
Instead.
“Sundays we have family dinner. Everyone attends.”
She looks up from the ledgers.
