Chapter 7 - FAMILY COMES FIRST
I used to think Diane’s favorite sentence was annoying.
Now I understood it was a warning.
Family comes first.
What she meant was:
Her family came first.
My career, money, privacy, sleep, credit, reputation, and time existed underneath that rule.
Ben traced nearly $600,000 through C&E.
Mark received $146,000.
Diane received $173,000.
Eric’s company received most of the rest.
Then we found another file.
Minutes from a C&E “board meeting.”
I was supposedly present.
I was supposedly chairwoman.
I was supposedly the person who approved bonuses for Diane and Mark.
The meeting took place on a Tuesday afternoon when I had been presenting in Chicago.
My flight records proved it.
Naomi stared at the document.
“They were building corporate history.”
“For what?”
“To make you look involved.”
The more I discovered, the more the past changed shape.
Diane insisting I leave tax folders downstairs.
Eric asking for copies of my driver’s license “for insurance.”
Mark borrowing our scanner.
Little moments.
Harmless at the time.
Not harmless anymore.
Then corporate security called.
They had completed a deeper analysis of Mark’s attempted access to my damaged laptop.
“He was trying to retrieve a specific local file,” the investigator said.
“How can you know that?”
“The file path appears in the failed access log.”
He read it aloud.
I recognized it immediately.
It was the financial model for the redevelopment client.
The same client C&E had bid on.
My stomach dropped.
“What exactly was in that model?”
“Confidential project budgets, target acquisition costs, and vendor assumptions.”
Enough information to give a contractor an enormous bidding advantage.
My career could be ruined if anyone believed I had intentionally provided it.
The investigator continued.
“We have no evidence the file was successfully accessed that night.”
“That night?”
I caught the wording.
“What do you mean?”
Silence.
Then:
“Claire, someone accessed a screenshot of the model three weeks earlier from your home network.”
I stopped breathing.
“Using my laptop?”
“No.”
“What device?”
He gave me the manufacturer.
Samsung.
A tablet.
Eric owned an iPad.
Diane had an old laptop.
Mark owned a Samsung tablet.
I remembered seeing it propped against the fruit bowl weeks earlier.
I had been working at the table.
Mark had been sitting behind me.
I had assumed he was watching basketball.
He hadn’t needed to steal my laptop.
He had already photographed my screen.
And suddenly the midnight confrontation made even more sense.
May you like
They weren’t trying to get information.
They were trying to destroy evidence that could prove where the information had come from.
