Chapter 5 - The Ledger
By 3:00 AM, the noise from the nightclub below had faded to a quiet murmur as the club finally closed its doors. Inside the private suite, the atmosphere had shifted completely. The threat of immediate violence had dissipated, replaced by the quiet, intense atmosphere of a late-night corporate war room.
A massive stack of black leather-bound ledgers and several encrypted flash drives lay scattered across the mahogany table. Harper sat in Dominic’s chair, a pair of reading glasses she had retrieved from her purse perched on her nose, her cracked phone replaced by a high-end corporate tablet Dominic had provided.
Dominic stood near the window, a fresh glass of whiskey in his hand, watching her silently as she worked. Vance and the other guards had been dismissed to the hallway, leaving only the two of them in the vast, shadowed room.
Harper’s fingers flew across the tablet’s screen, her eyes scanning line after line of complex financial transactions. Shell companies in Panama, real estate holdings in Miami, equipment leases for Chicago docks—the Vulpes financial empire was vast, intricate, and meticulously organized. But to an expert eye, perfection was often a red flag.
“Here,” Harper said suddenly, her voice cutting through the quiet room.
Dominic turned away from the window and walked over to the desk, leaning over her shoulder to look at the screen. “What did you find?”
“Your logistics company—Vulpes Shipping & Transit,” Harper explained, pointing a slender finger at a series of line items on the spreadsheet. “Over the last six months, there are recurring payments made to a vendor called 'Apex Maintenance Group' for routine fleet repairs. The amounts are relatively small—fifty thousand here, seventy thousand there—so they don't trigger automated flags.”
Dominic frowned, staring at the numbers. “Apex is our contracted vendor for truck servicing. What’s wrong with them?”
“The tax identification number associated with Apex Maintenance Group is registered to a post office box in Delaware,” Harper revealed, turning to look up at him. “And when I cross-reference their billing invoice numbers, they follow a perfect linear sequence—001, 002, 003. That means Apex has no other clients. They exist solely to bill Vulpes Shipping.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened, his eyes darkening dangerously. “Someone is routing internal company funds into a fake vendor.”
“Not just routing,” Harper corrected, pulling up another file. “Look at the approval signatures. Every single payment was authorized by your Chief Financial Officer.”
“Julian Ross,” Dominic growled softly, the name tasting like poison on his tongue.
“Julian Ross has stolen approximately two point four million dollars from your logistics division over the last eighteen months,” Harper stated flatly, leaning back in the leather chair and looking up at him. “He wasn't even being particularly clever about it. He assumed no one with real forensic training would ever audit these specific sub-ledgers.”
Dominic was silent for a long moment. He stared at the screen, the amber light reflecting off his dark eyes. The speed and precision with which Harper had unraveled a fraud that had gone unnoticed for over a year left him genuinely impressed.
“Two point four million,” Dominic repeated quietly. He looked down at Harper, his expression unreadable. “You did that in less than two hours.”
“I’m very good at my job,” Harper said simply, crossing her arms. “Now, I believe we had an agreement.”
Dominic smiled—a slow, genuine smile that transformed his harsh face, making him look dangerously handsome. “We do indeed, Miss Reed.”
He reached out, pulled a wireless intercom to his mouth, and pressed a button. “Vance. Bring Caleb Thorne inside.”
Harper’s heart did a sudden, nervous flutter. She sat up straight in her chair, holding her breath as the heavy oak door unlocked and swung open.
Vance marched into the room, shoving a disheveled, terrified Caleb ahead of him. Caleb’s hair was messy, his expensive suit rumpled, and his face pale with shear terror. Behind him walked Chloe, who looked equally terrified, her blonde hair messy and mascara running down her cheeks.
Caleb’s eyes darted frantically around the room until they landed on Harper sitting behind the massive desk, sitting beside the most feared man in Chicago’s underworld.
“Harper?” Caleb gasped, his voice high and shrill with utter confusion. “What... what are you doing here? What is going on?”
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Harper looked at her fiancé of three years—the man she had planned to marry, the man who had stolen her money and betrayed her trust. Sitting in this position of power, flanked by Dominic Vulpes, she felt no pain left for him. Only cold, distant contempt.
“Hello, Caleb,” Harper said smoothly, resting her chin on her hand. “We need to talk about your credit debt.”
