Chapter 4 - The Hidden Ledger
The boardroom meeting ended in a tense, humiliating retreat for Julian and his faction of frightened board members. They had filed out of the room one by one, mumbling excuses about scheduling conflicts and pending audits, leaving Elias and Nora alone in the sprawling glass-walled office that overlooked the entire skyline of Bellmont.
Elias sat by the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out at the traffic crawling along the highway far below.
Nora stood near his desk, methodically sorting through a stack of encrypted flash drives she had pulled from Julian’s office computer while the board members were distracted.
"You played that well," Nora said without looking up. "Though threatening to fire the entire board might land us in some interesting wrongful termination lawsuits."
"They're cowards," Elias said flatly, his reflection visible in the glass. "Cowards don't sue; they comply."
"True." Nora plugged a black flash drive into her laptop. A series of complex financial folders popped up on the screen. "Speaking of compliance, I managed to hack into Julian’s private offshore server using the administrative backdoor your grandfather built into the system back in '98."
Elias turned his chair around. "What did you find?"
"A lot of things your accountants missed," Nora said, clicking rapidly through a series of encrypted spreadsheets. "For starters, Julian didn't just buy a vacation home in the Bahamas last year. He funded it using shell companies tied directly to Marchetti Logistics' European shipping routes."
She spun the laptop around so Elias could see the screen.
Columns of numbers scrolled past—millions of dollars siphoned out of corporate accounts over a three-year period, disguised as routine maintenance fees and port storage tariffs.
"He’s been bleeding the company dry," Elias said, his eyes narrowing. "That’s why he was so desperate to take over. If an independent audit had been triggered next quarter, his embezzlement scheme would have landed him in federal prison for twenty years."
"Which brings us back to your accident," Nora added quietly. "If you were dead or incapacitated, Julian would become sole trustee of the corporate accounts. He could write off the missing funds as restructuring losses, dissolve the shell companies, and no one would ever audit the books."
Elias felt a cold rage settle deep in his chest. It wasn't just corporate greed. It was betrayal by blood. Julian had grown up under his roof, eaten at his family’s table, and smiled at his engagement party.
And he had tried to kill him on a winding mountain road for a ledger balance.
"We need proof that ties him directly to the tampering of my car," Elias said. "Financial embezzlement will ruin him in civil court, but it won't put him behind bars for attempted murder."
"I'm working on that," Nora said, typing a rapid string of commands into her keyboard. "Julian is arrogant, but he’s also sloppy. He communicates with his fixers through an encrypted messaging app called Cipher. I managed to clone his phone data when his assistant left his device unattended on the boardroom table during the break."
She hit the enter key.
A single chat window appeared on the screen.
Sender: Julian Marchetti Recipient: Leo Vance (The Mechanic) Timestamp: October 14, 11:45 PM (Two days before the crash)
Message: "Make sure the brake line failure looks organic. If he survives the drop, the medical bills will keep him tied down long enough for me to lock down the board vote. Do not screw this up."
Reply from Leo Vance: "Done. Fifty percent upfront, fifty percent when the car hits the ravine. Wire it to the Cayman account."
Elias stared at the words glowing on the screen. The absolute finality of it. His own flesh and blood had put a price on his life, trading his survival for stock shares and a corner office.
"Print that," Elias said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
"Already did," Nora said, pulling several sheets of paper from the portable printer beside her desk. She handed the documentation to him. "What’s our next move? Do we take this straight to Sheriff Miller?"
Elias shook his head slowly, folding the papers and sliding them into his breast pocket.
"Not yet," Elias said, leaning forward. "If we go to the police now, Julian’s high-priced defense attorneys will claim the data was hacked illegally, get the evidence suppressed, and tip him off so he can flee the country with the rest of the embezzled funds."
"Then what do you propose?" Nora asked, raising an eyebrow.
"We trap him," Elias said. "We let him think he’s winning. We let him call an emergency shareholder vote for next Monday, claiming I’m unfit to govern. And then, right in front of the entire board, we pull the rug out from under him."
Nora looked at him for a long moment, a slow, appreciative smile spreading across her lips.
"I like it," she said. "Mr. Marchetti, you really are as ruthless as the rumors say."
"Survival requires a certain lack of sentimentality, Miss Bennett," Elias replied coldly.
Just then, the intercom on the desk chimed.
Victoria, Elias’s longtime executive secretary,’s voice trembled slightly through the speaker. "Mr. Marchetti? You have a visitor in the lobby. She... she insists on seeing you."
Elias frowned. "Who is it, Victoria?"
May you like
There was a brief hesitation on the other end of the line.
"It’s Clara, sir. She says she needs to talk to you about the breakup."
