Chapter 3 - The Audit of Lies
The investigation hit the company like a tidal wave. With me holding forty-eight percent of the shares and the board smelling blood, the internal audit was swift and brutal.
For four years, Daniel had been running a secondary, illicit economy through the company. I sat in a conference room with forensic accountants, watching the numbers flash across the screen. They weren't just numbers; they were my life’s work being siphoned off.
"He paid for her lifestyle," the lead accountant noted, pointing to a series of offshore transfers. "The apartment in the city, the medical bills, the 'international strategy' retreats. It’s all here, Claire. Three million dollars."
The betrayal cut deeper than the infidelity. He had treated my father’s legacy—the money that was meant to secure Noah’s future—as a personal slush fund for his mistress.
When we finally met in the legal conference room, Daniel looked haggard. The aura of the confident CEO was gone, replaced by a desperate, sweating man.
"You're destroying us, Claire!" he shouted, ignoring his lawyer’s frantic attempts to silence him. "We built this together! You were never in the boardroom, you never faced the investors!"
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I opened my folder. I laid out the original contracts, the early emails where I had corrected his errors, the bank statements from my inheritance that funded our first office.
"I was the architect," I said, my voice ice-cold. "You were just the salesman. And you just sold the company out from under yourself."
