“The board has no choice,” Vanessa said into the receiver. “Once the Vela deal goes through, Ryan will have the entire midwest portfolio under his thumb.”
My hand froze over the edge of the paper.
“They think some anonymous firm is buying them out,” Vanessa laughed, her voice dropping slightly. “Ryan says the new owners won’t even know where the accounts are buried.”
She hung up the phone and set it on the marble table with a sharp click.
I stared at the signature line on the acquisition draft, realizing my past was about to collide with my future.
The air inside the server room was chilled to fifty-five degrees to keep the mainframe racks from overheating. I pulled my gray wool cardigan tighter around my shoulders as Marcus, our IT director, clicked through the raw data of the Meridian acquisition file.
The cooling fans hummed a low, steady drone that vibrated through the soles of my shoes. Marcus adjusted his glasses and pointed to a line of glowing green code.
“Some numbers look too beautiful to be real, Ms. Hart.”
I leaned closer to the monitor, my eyes scanning the ledger columns. “Show me the recurring transfers.”
Marcus tapped the keyboard, and a series of identical transactions populated the screen. Every month on the sixteenth, a payment of exactly ninety thousand dollars left Meridian’s primary operating account.
“Where is it going?” I asked.
“A shell company registered in Delaware,” Marcus said, scrolling down to the routing details. “The contract is filed under regional sales marketing, but there is no corresponding work order attached to any of these entries.”
I reached down and adjusted my silver wristwatch, pulling the strap one notch tighter against my wrist. “How long has this automated payout been active?”
“Thirty-six months,” Marcus said.
That meant over three million dollars had quietly slipped out of the company while Arthur Bennett believed his sales division was operating at peak efficiency.
“There is something else,” Marcus said, turning to look at me. “We did not find this through our standard pre-merger discovery protocols.”
“How did we get it?” I asked.
