Chapter 2 - THE RED FOLDER
Dominic ended dinner eighteen minutes later.
He did it gracefully.
That was one of the qualities Evelyn had always found most unsettling about him. Other powerful men revealed stress by becoming louder. Dominic became more precise.
He stood, thanked the Winter Table hosts, apologized for an urgent company matter, and left Aster House without giving anyone enough material for a satisfying rumor.
Grant followed.
So did Evelyn.
Inside the rear compartment of Dominic’s car, nobody spoke until the privacy glass rose between them and the driver.
Grant broke first.
“This is insane.”
Dominic sat opposite him. “Which part?”
“You letting a secretary ambush me at the Winter Table.”
Evelyn looked through the window at Manhattan moving past.
Dominic did not.
“You asked her where she got the information.”
“Because she accessed records she had no business touching.”
Evelyn turned.
“That isn’t true.”
Grant pointed at her. “Stay out of this.”
Dominic’s eyes shifted toward his cousin’s finger.
Grant lowered his hand.
Evelyn opened the folder. “Every internal document in here passed through my office as part of my assigned work. The public corporate records are public. I accessed no bank account, private email or restricted system.”
Dominic took the folder.
“What exactly are you alleging?”
“Nothing yet.”
Grant laughed sharply. “Oh, now nothing?”
Evelyn ignored him. “I’m saying Northstar received $8.4 million from Vale entities over three years for services described inconsistently across subsidiaries. I’m saying its ownership chain terminates at an administrator using the same business address as Mercer Capital Partners.”
Grant leaned forward. “Hundreds of companies use registered agents.”
“I know.”
“And shared addresses prove nothing.”
“I know.”
Dominic looked at Evelyn.
She had just given Grant the two strongest defenses to her own evidence.
That interested him.
“What else?”
“Timing.”
She handed him another page. “Northstar payments spike during quarters when the Brooklyn operations report unexplained inventory losses. Every time Northstar gets paid more, the losses get worse.”
“Correlation.”
“Exactly.”
Grant looked frustrated. “Then what are we doing?”
Evelyn met his eyes. “Checking whether it’s coincidence.”
Silence.
Dominic looked down at the page again.
His father had taught him that accusation was emotional and evidence was expensive.
Dominic had improved the lesson.
Evidence was worth more.
He turned to Grant. “Until this is resolved, you stay away from vendor approvals connected to the Brooklyn operations.”
Grant stared.
“You’re restricting me because your secretary found a mailing address?”
“I’m separating you from the question.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No. If I believed her conclusion already, this conversation would be very different.”
Grant understood what Dominic meant.
So did Evelyn.
For the remainder of the drive, he said nothing.
Back at Vale Tower, Dominic took Evelyn into his office while Grant was told to go home.
It was nearly eleven.
The executive floor was empty.
Evelyn removed her evening coat and sat in the same chair where department heads usually sweated through meetings.
Dominic remained standing.
“Why tonight?”
“I found the address Wednesday.”
“You could have told me Thursday.”
“I was going to.”
“But?”
She looked toward the glass wall surrounding his office.
“Then I heard why you invited me.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
There was no point lying.
“You heard Grant.”
“I heard both of you.”
“I told him if you became uncomfortable, it ended.”
Evelyn considered that. “Did that make it kinder?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Good.
Dominic sat.
“I owe you an apology.”
“Yes.”
That surprised him.
Most people rushed to release powerful men from discomfort.
Evelyn did not.
“You invited me into a room full of people who could affect my job, my reputation and possibly my safety because watching me feel out of place amused your cousin.”
“I agreed to it.”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong.”
“Yes.”
Dominic stared at her.
Evelyn’s expression softened slightly.
“I’m not making you suffer, Mr. Vale. You’re simply not accustomed to apologizing without someone rescuing you from it.”
He almost smiled.
“I’m beginning to understand why expense reports fear you.”
“That should have happened years ago.”
His eyes dropped to the red folder.
“How long have you been able to do this?”
“Read?”
“Forensic analysis.”
Evelyn leaned back. “My mother was a forensic accountant.”
“Was?”
“She has early-onset dementia.”
Dominic remembered almost nothing Evelyn had told him about her family because she had told him almost nothing.
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that she no longer remembers what she taught me.”
For once Dominic did not ask the next question immediately.
Evelyn noticed.
“She lives outside Albany. Memory care.”
“Why didn’t you work in accounting?”
“I did. Briefly. Then Mom became ill. I needed predictable hours, stable insurance and more money than junior audit work paid.”
“And you applied here.”
“You pay obscenely well.”
“So you told me.”
“One of my more attractive qualities is consistency.”
Dominic looked at the financial pages again.
“Why make yourself invisible?”
That question landed differently.
Evelyn took off her glasses and cleaned them with the edge of a cloth from her purse.
“When I started here, I knew what kind of company this was.”
Dominic’s eyes hardened slightly.
“Officially?”
She gave him a look.
“No.”
Fair.
“I needed the job. I didn’t want attention from men who had no reason to notice me. Then I learned something.”
“What?”
“People talk around women they’ve already decided don’t matter.”
Dominic felt the sentence more personally than she intended.
Or perhaps exactly as personally.
“How much do you know?”
“About the company?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to know your hotel division is healthier than the reports make it look. Enough to know three warehouse managers inflate losses. Enough to know Grant’s entertainment budget could fund a small country.”
“That’s not a secret.”
“And enough to know you’ve been moving legitimate revenue into operations you think are failing because somebody keeps presenting those failures to you as unavoidable.”
Dominic became still.
“You think the losses were manufactured.”
“I think some of them might be.”
“That is a considerably larger accusation.”
“I know.”
“What do you need?”
Evelyn did not answer immediately.
“Access.”
“To what?”
“Accounts payable source records for the three Brooklyn subsidiaries, contract history for Northstar, and the vendor onboarding documents. Read-only.”
Dominic studied her.
“You’ve considered this.”
“Since Wednesday.”
“If I give you access and you’re wrong?”
“Then you’ll have wasted a weekend proving your cousin innocent.”
“And if you’re right?”
Evelyn put her glasses back on.
“Then you didn’t invite the most dangerous person to dinner.”
May you like
Dominic waited.
“You seated him beside you.”
