Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO HAD BEEN THERE FROM THE BEGINNING
At 1:10 A.M., Grant finally left the condo.
The security camera showed him walking out alone.
Sophie remained inside.
That frightened me more.
“What is she doing?” I whispered.
Elliot watched the feed through screen share.
“Searching.”
Sophie entered my old studio.
Opened drawers.
Moved tax boxes.
Then she stopped in front of the cabinet containing my external drives.
My chest tightened.
“There.”
Naomi said, “Do not go home.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Sophie removed three drives and placed them inside her handbag.
That was enough for Naomi.
“We call the police now.”
The building’s security team intercepted Sophie in the lobby.
She claimed the drives belonged to Harbor Bridge.
They didn’t.
They contained my personal design archives.
Police documented them and returned them to me later that morning.
By sunrise, I was sitting in Naomi’s office drinking coffee that tasted like punishment.
Grant had sent fifty-three messages.
I read none.
Elliot arrived at seven.
He was younger than I expected.
Forty-one, maybe.
Dark suit.
No tie.
Calm in a way that suggested other people usually became nervous first.
He placed a folder on Naomi’s desk.
“This is what Sophie was trying to find.”
Inside were copies of Harbor Bridge’s early financial reports.
Hidden metadata linked them to shell companies.
The first shell had purchased “consulting services” from Harbor Bridge.
The second had loaned money back.
The transactions created fake revenue.
“Why?” I asked.
“To inflate valuation,” Elliot said.
“For this financing round?”
“Partly.”
“How much fake revenue?”
“Eleven million over five years.”
I looked at Naomi.
“And the forty-six million?”
“Client funds routed through related entities,” Elliot said.
My stomach turned.
That was bigger.
Much bigger.
“Grant?”
“We don’t yet know how much he knew.”
I almost snapped at him.
Then remembered something.
Grant had begged me to delete the post because financing would collapse.
He had not begged me to hide financial fraud.
Maybe because he didn’t know Elliot had found it.
Or maybe because he did.
“Why is Sophie’s signature on my ownership transfer?”
Elliot opened another file.
Sophie Lane was not twenty-seven.
Not officially.
Her legal name was Sophia Larkin.
Thirty-three.
She had worked for an accounting firm servicing Harbor Bridge before joining Grant’s company.
I stared at her old employee photograph.
Same woman.
Different hair.
Different name.
“She changed identities?”
“Her surname changed after her mother remarried. But she intentionally omitted the earlier employment.”
Naomi’s expression hardened.
“Sophie helped create the transfer.”
Elliot nodded.
Then slid one final document toward me.
A bank record.
Five years ago, two days after my ten percent ownership was supposedly transferred to Grant, a payment of $250,000 left Harbor Bridge.
Recipient:
Sophia Larkin.
My hands went cold.
“What was she paid for?”
Elliot answered:
“Internal restructuring.”
Naomi laughed without humor.
“You mean stealing Claire’s shares.”
I looked at the current valuation.
My ten percent was worth roughly twelve million today.
If the financing closed, nearly twenty.
Grant had not simply erased my career.
He had erased my ownership.
Then Elliot pointed to another transaction.
Three days after Sophie received the money, she sent half of it to someone else.
The recipient name made me stop breathing.
May you like
Evelyn Whitmore.
Grant’s mother.
