Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN RED
My badge had not been cloned.
That was the first useful fact.
The second was worse.
Someone had requested a temporary duplicate.
The request was submitted electronically at 11:38 p.m. on the night of the anniversary party.
The authorization field contained my name.
The signature was not mine.
Dana projected the request onto the conference-room screen.
Julian stared at it.
“Who can issue temporary badges?”
“Security administration,” Dana said.
“Who requested it?”
“We’re tracing the login.”
Victor leaned toward the screen.
The forged signature was crude.
Anyone familiar with mine would know that.
But an automated system wouldn’t.
“What did they expect?” I asked. “That we’d assume I came back at three in the morning to hide evidence from my own acquisition review?”
Malcolm looked grim.
“They may not have needed the story to survive long. Only long enough to muddy the investigation.”
Julian rubbed his face.
“Camilla wouldn’t do that.”
I looked at him.
It was almost touching.
“You’re still defending her?”
“I know her.”
“No, Julian. You sleep with her.”
His expression tightened.
“That isn’t the same thing.”
The silence that followed was exquisite.
He heard himself.
So did everyone else.
At 1:20 that afternoon, security found the login.
It had come from Camilla’s company-issued laptop.
Julian stopped defending her.
Camilla finally appeared at 2:07.
Still in yesterday’s makeup.
Hair pulled into a hurried knot.
No red gown.
No diamonds.
She entered the conference room with an attorney.
“I won’t answer questions without counsel.”
Dana nodded.
“That is your right.”
Camilla’s eyes found mine.
Hatred.
Pure and undiluted.
“You set this up.”
Her attorney touched her arm.
“Camilla.”
She ignored him.
“You bought this company because of Julian.”
“No.”
“You expect anyone to believe that?”
Victor pushed a spreadsheet across the table.
“Mason Bridge Consulting.”
Her face changed.
Tiny.
But enough.
“I don’t handle procurement.”
“You created the communications scope attached to its contract.”
“That doesn’t mean I selected the vendor.”
“Your brother owns the address.”
“My brother owns properties.”
“Seventeen?”
She said nothing.
Victor continued.
“Mason Bridge has no employees, no operating website, no payroll filings we can identify, and received $2.8 million from Aurelia.”
Her attorney finally interrupted.
“We’ll need copies of these materials.”
“Of course.”
Julian leaned forward.
“Did you steal money?”
Camilla stared at him.
The room changed.
Until then, this had been corporate.
Now it was personal.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You signed every authorization.”
“Because you told me they were legitimate.”
“I gave you the packages.”
“Did you know Mason Bridge belonged to your brother?”
Her silence lasted one second too long.
Julian stood.
“You used me.”
Camilla laughed.
Actually laughed.
“Oh, please.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You loved being important.”
His face hardened.
“You wanted the title. The expense account. The board access. You wanted everyone to believe you were the smartest man in the room.”
“Answer the question.”
“I never forced you to sign anything.”
Victor spoke.
“No. But you did send him eight payment requests marked urgent, each immediately before quarterly reporting.”
Camilla’s lawyer whispered something.
She ignored him again.
Julian stared at her.
“Where did the money go?”
She folded her arms.
“You think I kept three million dollars?”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
For the first time, Camilla looked afraid.
Not of me.
Not of Julian.
Of the answer.
Victor noticed.
“So Mason Bridge wasn’t the endpoint.”
She said nothing.
He continued.
“It was a pass-through.”
Her attorney stood.
“This interview is over.”
Camilla rose.
Before leaving, she looked at Julian.
“You should be careful which questions you ask.”
Then she walked out.
By sunset, Victor had traced $1.9 million from Mason Bridge to another company.
Redcrest Advisory.
The name meant nothing to me.
It meant something to Malcolm.
He stood when he saw it.
“No.”
Victor looked up.
“You know them?”
Malcolm removed his glasses.
“Redcrest was one of the consultants involved in the failed European expansion.”
The expansion that had nearly destroyed Aurelia.
I felt cold.
“How much did Aurelia lose on that expansion?”
“More than forty million.”
“And Julian?”
Malcolm looked toward him.
“He helped design the strategy.”
Julian shook his head.
“Redcrest wasn’t my consultant.”
“No,” Malcolm said.
“Whose?”
Malcolm’s answer changed everything.
“Camilla’s father introduced them.”
The affair suddenly looked smaller.
Still cruel.
Still humiliating.
But smaller.
Victor spent the next week rebuilding the money trail.
Redcrest had received funds from Aurelia during the expansion.
When the project began failing, several payments stopped.
Then Mason Bridge was created.
Money started flowing again under different labels.
Crisis communications.
Strategic positioning.
Reputation management.
All vague enough to survive a distracted approval process.
Julian had signed them.
But someone else had designed the pipeline.
Then we found the email.
It was recovered from a deleted archive.
Camilla to her father:
J still signs anything if I tell him Reed needs it before morning. Keep the next one under 500. Audrey doesn’t know enough about his work to ask questions.
I read the last sentence twice.
Audrey doesn’t know enough.
For years, Julian had treated my lack of interest in bragging as ignorance.
Camilla had believed him.
Their arrogance had created the blind spot that allowed Northstar to conduct four months of due diligence without either noticing who was behind it.
Julian read the email beside me.
He looked physically ill.
“She was laughing at me.”
I folded my arms.
“Apparently.”
“She told her father I’d sign anything.”
“You did.”
He looked at me.
There was no defense available.
So he asked:
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
The question stunned me.
“Who I was?”
“Northstar.”
“You never asked.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, Julian. What wasn’t fair was spending nine years making yourself the main character in a marriage with two people.”
He looked down.
I continued.
“You knew my mother ran investments.”
“I thought it was family money.”
“It was. Then she turned it into an investment firm.”
“You never explained.”
“You never listened.”
Silence.
That night, I went home alone.
Julian had moved into a hotel.
His choice.
Our marriage was effectively over, even if the paperwork had not begun.
I opened my jewelry box.
The empty velvet space where the earrings had been remained.
I had spent months believing those diamonds represented the worst thing Camilla had taken.
Then Dana called.
“We found them.”
“What?”
“Your earrings.”
My heart jumped.
“Where?”
“Camilla’s office.”
I almost laughed.
“Of course.”
Dana didn’t.
“There’s something else in the same safe.”
“What?”
“A second phone.”
My laughter vanished.
“What’s on it?”
“We haven’t opened it yet.”
“Can you?”
“Not without proper authorization.”
I sat down.
“Then get it.”
The next morning, investigators imaged the device.
Most of the conversations were ordinary.
Then Victor found a hidden messaging application.
And one conversation with Camilla’s father contained a sentence that turned corporate theft into something much darker:
If Audrey ever figures out Northstar can take Aurelia, make Julian believe the marriage is the reason. He’ll destroy her credibility for us.
They had known who I was.
May you like
Long before the party.
And my husband’s affair had become part of their contingency plan.
