Chapter 4 - The Company Behind the Company
Elaine laughed.
It sounded wrong.
Too loud.
Too forced.
“Hartcrest is an investment vehicle.”
Simone looked at her.
“Registered in Delaware?”
“Yes.”
“Beneficial owner undisclosed?”
Elaine’s face tightened.
“That is perfectly legal.”
David Park replied, “Depending on what the company is being used for.”
I watched Grant.
He would not look at me.
That told me enough.
“How much?” I asked.
No one answered.
I looked at Simone.
“How much money moved through Hartcrest?”
She hesitated.
Jonathan answered over the phone.
“Based on what we have confirmed so far, approximately $740,000.”
Tessa gasped.
My stomach dropped.
Elaine recovered first.
“Credits are not cash.”
“No,” Simone said. “But fraudulent credits can create artificial liabilities, inventory write-offs, and reimbursement transfers.”
Grant finally spoke.
“You’re making it sound criminal.”
David turned toward him.
“No one used that word except you.”
Again.
Grant kept defending accusations nobody had made aloud.
I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
The front doors remained locked while staff quietly redirected confused customers to the secondary exit.
Elaine watched people leave her little stage.
That seemed to bother her more than anything.
She had wanted an audience when she fired me.
She had not expected to become the entertainment.
Simone began collecting devices.
Grant refused to hand over his company phone.
David reminded him that Belle & Vale owned it.
He surrendered it.
Elaine insisted her phone was personal.
David asked whether she had used it to communicate with employees about company transactions.
She stopped answering questions.
Finally.
I walked toward my office.
Simone joined me.
Inside, nothing looked disturbed.
My framed sales awards hung on the wall.
My coffee mug sat beside the computer.
My father’s old fountain pen lay in the tray near the keyboard.
I had spent thousands of hours inside that room.
Grant rarely visited.
Yet apparently he had walked in after midnight believing my career was something he could simply borrow and destroy.
Simone closed the door halfway.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“The investigation did not begin two weeks ago.”
I frowned.
“That’s when accounting contacted me.”
“That’s when we contacted you.”
My pulse quickened.
“Then when did it begin?”
“Four months ago.”
I stared at her.
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“Because you were being watched too.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“For theft?”
“For vulnerability.”
I didn’t understand.
She sat opposite my desk.
“Someone was trying to create a transaction pattern around your credentials. We needed to know whether you were involved, compromised, or being targeted.”
“And?”
“You were being targeted.”
I exhaled slowly.
Simone pulled a folder from her bag.
“Jonathan asked me to give you this when the timing became necessary.”
“What timing?”
“Today apparently qualifies.”
Inside was a corporate resolution dated six weeks earlier.
I read the first paragraph.
Then read it again.
Emergency succession authority.
Flagship operations.
Voting trust.
My name.
I looked at Simone.
“What is this?”
“Jonathan planned to announce it next month.”
“Announce what?”
She smiled for the first time that morning.
“That the board appointed you Executive Director of East Coast Retail Operations.”
I stared at her.
That meant forty-three stores.
Thousands of employees.
A seat at operational planning meetings.
Grant had arrived expecting to strip me of one store.
Without knowing I had already been promoted above every store manager in the region.
But Simone wasn’t finished.
She turned another page.
“And Claire?”
“Yes?”
“Your promotion is not the part Elaine is most afraid of.”
She tapped a paragraph near the bottom.
It concerned the Vale Employee Legacy Trust.
Voting rights.
Protected equity.
Beneficiary class.
I looked up.
May you like
Simone said quietly:
“You own more voting power in Belle & Vale than Grant does.”
