Chapter 2 - The Audit and the AliasThe house felt larger, colder, and hollow once Victoria was gone. Daniel carried Lily upstairs to her bedroom, read her favorite story about a brave little star three times until her breathing evened out into the deep, rhythmic patterns of sleep, and gently kissed her forehead. Only then did he walk down the carpeted hallway to his private home study, locking the heavy mahogany door behind him.
He sat down at his glass-topped executive desk and opened his laptop.
The security cameras around the perimeter of the estate had captured Victoria’s frantic departure, but they also captured something else—something that sent a cold spike of unease straight down Daniel’s spine. Twenty minutes before he had arrived home early from his meeting, an unfamiliar black sedan had pulled up to the service gate at the rear of the property. A man in a dark suit had stepped out, handed a thick manila envelope to Victoria at the side entrance, and driven away without speaking to anyone else.
Daniel pulled up his private network interface and ran the license plate through an investigative database he retained for corporate security.
The owner wasn't a corporate competitor. It wasn't even a local acquaintance.
The plate traced back to a registered legal shell corporation named Meridian Holdings LLC—the exact same firm that had quietly been buying up distressed debt on several of Daniel’s commercial properties over the last six months. And at the head of Meridian Holdings was a name Daniel hadn't heard in years: Jonathan Vance.
Vance was a ruthless corporate raider who had tried to hostilely take over Daniel’s logistics firm two years ago and failed miserably. Since then, Vance had vanished from the public eye, rumored to be operating out of state.
Why was Victoria in contact with Jonathan Vance? And why was she coordinating a manufactured custody battle that would strip Daniel of his parental rights right as his company was preparing to go public?
Daniel’s phone buzzed on the desk. It was an email from his chief financial officer, Sarah Jenkins.
“Daniel, you need to see this immediately. We found a series of unauthorized wire transfers originating from the corporate expansion fund over the last ninety days. Totaling 1.4 million dollars. The receiving account is a private trust under Victoria’s maiden name... but the routing address goes straight to an offshore subsidiary linked to Meridian Holdings.”
Daniel stared at the screen, the pieces of a much larger, more sinister puzzle clicking into place with horrifying clarity.
Victoria hadn't just been planning a messy divorce to secure a high alimony settlement. She had been working as an inside plant for Jonathan Vance, systematically draining Daniel’s corporate capital and gathering manufactured leverage to force him out of his own company before the IPO next month. And Lily had almost become the ultimate pawn in their corporate war.
He picked up his phone and dialed a direct, encrypted number.
"Marcus," Daniel said the moment the line picked up.
"I'm here, boss," came the steady, gravelly voice of his head of security. "What do you need?"
"I need you to pull every security log, text message, and call record from Victoria’s personal tablet—it’s sitting on the kitchen island. And I want a twenty-four-hour detail on Lily starting right now. Nobody gets near my daughter. Nobody."
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"Consider it done," Marcus replied grimly. "And what about Mrs. Morgan?"
"Let her run," Daniel said, his eyes hardening as he stared out the window at the dark, sprawling gardens below. "She thinks she’s executing Vance’s playbook. But she’s about to find out what happens when you wake a sleeping bear."
