Nathan looked at him.
“These are not merely accounting discrepancies. Several payments were recorded as completed without sufficient documentation.”
“Perhaps the files were lost.”
“Then we will find them.”
Victor turned toward Clara.
“Ms. Morgan, I appreciate your enthusiasm. But you are young. Major acquisitions are more complicated than a spreadsheet might suggest.”
Clara felt the eyes of everyone in the room turn toward her.
“I’m not drawing conclusions, Mr. Shaw. I’m reporting inconsistencies in the data.”
Victor smiled.
“Good. But perhaps you should leave the investigation to people with more experience.”
Nathan closed the folder.
“We will continue with an independent review. Nobody is permitted to interfere with the audit team.”
After the meeting, Victor made a phone call.
“I need every backup copy of the Reed files before Friday.”
He paused.
“No. I don’t want to know how you do it. I just need them removed from the ordinary access system.”
That evening, Clara received an anonymous email warning her to stop the investigation if she wanted to keep her job.
She read it twice, saved the message, and reported it to the information security department.
The following morning, her computer account was locked after suspicious login activity was detected. Several documents she had accessed the previous evening were marked as downloaded under her credentials.
Clara had never downloaded them.
The IT department confirmed that someone might have used her credentials from another device. Her access was temporarily suspended while the incident was investigated.
Meanwhile, Victor urged Nathan to suspend her.
“We cannot allow a junior employee to access sensitive documents while the system is compromised.”
Nathan did not immediately agree or disagree.
Instead, he ordered an examination of login records, corridor security footage, and server logs.
Three days later, preliminary findings showed that Clara’s account had been accessed from a computer in the finance department while she was attending a training session on another floor.
Someone had deliberately used her credentials.
Nathan called Clara back to his office.
“I apologize that you have had to go through this.”
“I only wanted to do my job,” Clara replied.
“I know.”
“But if I’m not qualified enough, I can leave the team. I don’t want to create more problems.”
Nathan shook his head.
“The person who discovers a problem does not create it. The problem begins with the issue everyone has been ignoring.”
For the first time since joining Sterling International, Clara felt that she was no longer facing everything alone.
CHAPTER 5: THE SECRET IN THE SMALL HOUSE
While the investigation continued, Arthur Sterling remained in a small rented house in Vermont.
Nathan repeatedly offered to move his father into the family mansion, but Arthur refused.
“I don’t need a large house to prove that I’ve come home.”
One weekend evening, Nathan drove to visit him.
The two men sat beside the fireplace, eating hot soup and talking about the years they had lost.
Finally, Nathan asked the question he had carried for so long.
“Did you leave because I refused to listen to you?”
Arthur watched the flames.
“Not entirely. I left because I didn’t know how to accept that I could no longer control your life.”
He described the days following Samuel Reed’s death. Samuel’s family had been forced to sell the business to settle debts, and Arthur had wanted Nathan to protect the interests of the longtime employees.
But Nathan had been pursuing a major acquisition. Their disagreement had turned into a bitter argument, leaving both men wounded.
Arthur had decided to leave the city.
“I thought that if you experienced the consequences of your own decisions, you would grow stronger. But I was wrong to turn silence into a lesson.”
Nathan lowered his head.
“I was wrong, too, to believe you had abandoned me.”
Arthur placed a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“We both made mistakes. What matters now is what you do with what you have learned.”
Nathan glanced at the wooden box.
“Do you know who was responsible for the missing payments?”
“No. I only know that the original agreement was not fully honored.”
“Don’t you want this exposed publicly?”
“I want the truth to come out. But I don’t want you blaming anyone before the evidence is clear.”
Nathan thought of Clara.
She was a young woman without power, connections, or any personal reason to defend a multibillion-dollar corporation. Yet she had chosen to report what she found.
The next morning, Nathan hired an independent external auditing firm to take control of the review.
He also ordered a comprehensive examination of the company’s internal reporting procedures.