Arthur Knox’s gaze was unsettling, piercing through me as he flipped through Elias’s ledger. He picked up my bank statement, comparing the dates and figures with what was written in Lucas’s neat handwriting. The scent of stale cigar smoke filled the small office.
He didn’t speak, didn’t react. Just absorbed the information, his face a stone mask.
My heart pounded, a frantic drum against my ribs. I held Lily closer, her small, even breaths a comforting anchor in the tense silence.
Knox finally stopped on a page in the ledger. His thick finger tapped a line item labeled “Timber Haulage – Knox, Payment Received.” The amount listed was $15,000. He then looked at another entry, “Delivery Fee – Oakhaven East.” Another $5,000.
“These payments,” Knox rumbled, his voice like gravel. “Lucas claimed these were for timber I delivered to the Trust’s new community center. Said you authorized them, Clara.”
I shook my head. “I never saw those invoices, Mr. Knox. My business doesn’t deal in timber. We make dresses and alterations. And the Trust doesn’t have a new community center. That project was postponed indefinitely last year.”
Knox’s dark eyes narrowed. He looked at the ledger again, then back at me. A slow, terrifying realization dawned on his face.
“He invoiced me for deliveries I never made?” Knox mused, his voice dangerously soft. “And then logged those same phantom payments here as part of the choir fund expenditure?”
“Exactly,” I confirmed. “He pocketed the money, Mr. Knox. He forged syndicate receipts to cover his tracks and blamed it on the Trust’s ‘administrative fees’ paid through my business. He used your name, your reputation, to funnel money directly into his own pockets while pretending to pay off his debt to you.”
Knox slammed the ledger shut, a sharp crack that made me jump. His eyes blazed, not with anger at me, but with a cold, righteous fury that was far more terrifying.
“He embezzled the $65,000 from the choir fund, yes,” I clarified. “But he also stole an additional $20,000 from you, Mr. Knox, by faking those haulage payments. He kept that for himself. I heard he bought a new luxury sports car recently.”
The muscles in Knox’s jaw twitched. Lucas hadn’t just stiffed him on a debt; he had actively stolen from him, used his established criminal enterprise to enrich himself. That was the ultimate insult, the ultimate betrayal in Knox’s world.
He picked up a heavy, old-fashioned rotary phone on his desk. His gaze, now icy and focused, settled on me. “You wait here, Clara Higgins. Do not leave this office.”
I nodded, clutching Lily tighter. I had shown him the truth. Now, Arthur Knox, the feared syndicate boss, was about to conduct his own, very swift, very final audit.
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