Daddy, Grandpa’s associate hit the desk with a baseball bat and took the red binder!
My head pounded. The metallic scent of the service stairwell clung to me as I descended, my mind racing. Arthur had completely dismissed me, convinced I was delusional. But I knew what I saw. I knew the numbers didn’t lie.
I pulled out my personal phone, the one they couldn’t deactivate. It held a cached copy of the compliance files I’d pulled days ago, before Arthur had “digitally altered” them. It was my only lifeline.
I scrolled through the dense lines of code and financial data, my thumb flying. The $3.8 million wire transfer. My eyes skimmed the details, the routing numbers, the dates. Destination bank account.
This was it. The key. I zoomed in, magnifying the tiny, alphanumeric string.
It wasn’t a corporate reserve. It wasn’t an official offshore holding account for Ross Asset Management. My blood ran cold as I cross-referenced the account number with an old database of firm vendors and third-party contracts I had built myself.
The account belonged to a shell company. A shell company registered in the Cayman Islands.
And the listed owner of that shell company was Kenneth Albright.
My breath hitched. Kenneth. The man who had been so smug, so quick to accuse me of paranoia. The man who had smashed a bat on Arthur’s desk.
It wasn’t Arthur who was actively stealing money *for* the firm. Arthur was being *scammed*. Kenneth wasn’t just an enabler; he was the architect of the fraud.
He had manipulated Arthur’s fear of corporate bankruptcy, preying on his pride and his desperate need to protect his “legacy” after a recent market dip. Kenneth must have convinced Arthur that these “offshore adjustments” were legitimate, complex financial maneuvers necessary to “secure” the firm. He had likely presented Arthur with official-looking documents, just like the trust fund papers for Leo, to authorize the transfers directly into his own hidden accounts.
The pieces clicked into place with a sickening thud. Arthur wasn’t the cunning, cold-hearted criminal I had imagined. He was a proud, perhaps misguided, but ultimately victimized, figurehead. Kenneth, his trusted appraiser, was systematically siphoning funds, framing Arthur as the sole mastermind to cover his own tracks.
This wasn’t just a cover-up. It was a sophisticated betrayal. Kenneth was playing both sides, milking Arthur for his assets while simultaneously undermining my credibility.
I thought back to Kenneth’s smirk, his feigned concern, the way he’d been so eager to push for my psychiatric leave. It all made sense now. He wanted me out of the picture because I was too close to discovering *his* fraud, not Arthur’s.
The $3.8 million wasn’t for “harmless tax planning” for Ross Asset Management. It was Kenneth Albright’s personal wealth, siphoned directly from the firm, with Arthur none the wiser about the true beneficiary.
My anger surged, not just for myself, but for Arthur, for Leo, for everyone Kenneth was deceiving. I had to get back to the forty-second floor. I had to tell Arthur the truth about the man he implicitly trusted. I had to expose Kenneth.
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