Chapter 6 - The Silence of the Boardroom and the First Audit of Blood
The collective intake of breath around the mahogany table sounded like dry autumn leaves scraping across pavement.
Director Sterling, a man whose family had laundered money for the Kane syndicate since the prohibition era, slowly pushed his chair back a fraction of an inch, his eyes darting from Gabriel’s granite expression to my bruised face.
“Gabriel,” Sterling began, his voice trembling slightly despite decades of calculated intimidation, “surely you jest. Ms. Bennett is a valued asset in the auditing pool, yes, but running the financial core of the entire organization requires a lifetime of underworld connections, not a background in corporate spreadsheet balancing.”
Gabriel did not blink.
He released my hand, stepped behind the high-backed leather chair, and rested both palms flat against the dark wood, leaning forward like a predator cornering its prey.
“A lifetime of connections is precisely what let Viktor Vance siphon forty million dollars past your noses while you sat here sipping imported Scotch,” Gabriel said softly, his voice cutting through the heavy air with surgical precision. “Claire didn't need underworld connections to see the rot; she used mathematics, logic, and a level of absolute fearlessness none of you possess.”
I stepped forward, my boots clicking softly against the marble floor, letting the oversized sleeves of my ruined cardigan slide back from my wrists where the faint purple scars of the zip-ties still lingered.
“Project Janus isn't completely neutralized just because Viktor is tied up in the basement,” I said, my voice cutting cleanly across the room, steady and devoid of the old timidity. “Vance set up three secondary shell entities registered under dormant maritime shipping licenses in the Port of Indiana. If we don’t freeze those accounts within the next four hours, his automated liquidators will dump five million dollars into offshore proxy accounts before noon.”
Sterling’s face went pale. “How could you possibly know the transfer schedule?”
“Because I audited the encryption keys while they were holding me at gunpoint in Hammond,” I lied smoothly, offering a cold, thin smile that mirrored the expression of the man standing beside me. “Vance loves predictable algorithms. He used his dead wife’s birthday as the primary seed for his encryption protocol.”
Gabriel glanced down at me out of the corner of his eye, a flicker of dark approval igniting deep within his gaze.
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“You heard the new CFO,” Gabriel barked, snapping upright. “Mason, lock down the Port of Indiana accounts immediately. Sterling, if I find a single penny missing from those ledgers by sunset, you’ll be sharing a cell with Viktor down below.”
The directors scrambled out of their seats faster than panicked rats abandoning a sinking ship, leaving the massive glass-walled boardroom empty except for the two of us and the towering skyline of Chicago stretching out beneath the gray morning rain.
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