The coffee was cold by the time Victoria finished her second pass through the Luxembourg files.
She'd been sitting in the glass box for six hours. Her neck ached. Her eyes burned. Her phone had buzzed twelve times with messages from Nathaniel's assistant, Paul, asking if she needed anything. She'd ignored all of them.
What she needed was a name.
The Cyprus shell company had a nominee director—a lawyer in Nicosia who signed whatever was put in front of him. Victoria had dealt with his type before. Paid to see nothing, hear nothing, remember nothing. Useless.
But the money didn't just vanish in Cyprus. It moved again. Somewhere else. Somewhere with better privacy laws and worse coffee.
She traced the first transaction. Three years ago. January 17th. Exactly 2.4 million dollars.
The second transaction. February 14th. Same amount.
The third. March 10th. Same.
Every month, like clockwork. For three years. Whoever was stealing from Nathaniel Cross had discipline. They weren't greedy. They weren't sloppy. They were patient.
Victoria hated patient thieves. They were the hardest to catch.
She pulled up a map of the money's path. Meridian Group's Luxembourg account → Cyprus shell company → a second shell company in the Seychelles → a third in Panama → and then, nothing. The trail went cold at a numbered account in Switzerland.
Switzerland. Of course.
She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples. The Swiss didn't cooperate with foreign investigators unless someone had committed a crime involving a minor or a missile. Embezzlement didn't make the cut.
She needed another angle.
The door opened without a knock. Victoria didn't look up. She already knew who it was.
"You're supposed to be home," Nathaniel said.
"It's eight o'clock. I don't have a home."
He walked to the window and stood with his back to her, hands in his pockets. The city lights reflected off the glass, casting his face in shadow. From this angle, he looked almost human.
"You could have taken the evidence and left," he said. "You didn't."
"I'm not finished."
"Finished with what?"
She turned her laptop screen toward him. The map of transactions glowed blue and red, like a circulatory system for stolen money.
"Whoever is stealing from you has been doing it for three years," she said. "Exactly 2.4 million per month. Never more. Never less. They're not spending it. They're hoarding it."
Nathaniel walked closer, studying the screen. His shoulder was inches from hers. She could smell his cologne—something expensive and understated, like him.
"Eighty-six million dollars," he said quietly. "Rounded down."
"Eighty-six point four. The decimal matters."
He looked at her. Not at the screen. At her.
"You always were a perfectionist."
"I always had to be. My mistakes cost more than yours."
He didn't flinch. She wished he would. It would make him easier to hate.
"Who had access to the Luxembourg account?" she asked, turning back to the screen.
"Three people. Me. The CFO. And a junior accountant who quit six months before the withdrawals started."
"The accountant. Name."
"Alice May. She's in Seattle now. Works for a non-profit."
"You talked to her?"
"I had my lawyers talk to her. She didn't know anything."
"Your lawyers," Victoria repeated. "Not you."
Nathaniel's jaw tightened. "She was twenty-three. I wasn't going to intimidate a kid."
"So you intimidated her with lawyers instead. Very different."
Something flickered across his face. Annoyance, maybe. Or embarrassment. It was hard to tell with him.
"I'm not the villain you want me to be, Victoria."
"You're not the hero either."
"I never said I was."
They looked at each other. The glass box felt smaller than it had this morning. The city lights flickered outside, indifferent to whatever was happening between them.
Victoria looked away first.
"I need to talk to Alice May," she said. "In person. Not through lawyers."
"I'll book you a flight."
"I'll book my own flight. I don't owe you that."
Nathaniel nodded slowly. "Fine. But I'm coming with you."
"No."
"It's my company. My money. My former employee."
"I work alone."
"You work for me."
She stood up so fast her chair scraped against the floor. They were close now. Too close. She could see the fine lines around his eyes, the gray threading through his dark hair. He wasn't young anymore. Neither was she.
"I work for myself," she said. "I'm here because I want to be. The moment that changes, I walk. And I take everything I've found with me."
Nathaniel held her gaze. For a moment, she thought he might argue. Then he did something she didn't expect.
He stepped back.
"Fine," he said. "Go to Seattle. Talk to Alice May. But call me when you're done. I want to know what she says."
"You want to control what she says."
"I want to know if I've been trusting the wrong people." He walked to the door, then stopped. His hand rested on the frame, the same way it had earlier. "Victoria."
"What?"
"Be careful. If someone's been stealing eighty-six million dollars, they've been doing it for three years. That's not greed. That's patience. Patient people are dangerous."
She didn't answer. The door closed behind him.
Victoria sat back down and stared at the screen. The map of transactions glowed in the dark office. 2.4 million. Every month. For three years.
Nathaniel was right about one thing. Patient people were dangerous.
But she'd been patient too. Ten years of patience. Ten years of rebuilding herself from the ashes of her father's company. Ten years of waiting for a chance to find out what really happened.
She pulled up Alice May's file. Twenty-three years old when she quit. Fresh out of college. No criminal record. No red flags. Just a junior accountant who'd disappeared into the Pacific Northwest.
Victoria booked a flight to Seattle. Tomorrow morning. First class. Nathaniel's money.
Then she opened a second browser window and searched for something she hadn't looked at in years.
Hart Manufacturing bankruptcy 2016.
The old articles came up immediately. "Family-Owned Ohio Company Liquidated After Private Equity Raid." "CFO Victoria Hart Blames 'Aggressive Market Forces.'" "Hart Family Loses Century-Old Business."
She scrolled past the headlines to the comments section. People were cruel. They always were.
Then she found what she was looking for. A single sentence buried in a financial blog, written three days after the bankruptcy was finalized.
"The liquidation of Hart Manufacturing was orchestrated by Nathaniel Cross, then a junior analyst at Sterling Partners. Cross reportedly identified the company as a 'prime target' for asset stripping."
She'd known this for ten years. But seeing it in writing, in black and white, still made her chest tighten.
Nathaniel Cross had destroyed her family. And now he was paying her to save his company.
The universe had a sick sense of humor.
Victoria closed the browser, shut down her laptop, and stood up. The glass box felt cold without the laptop's glow. She gathered her things—blazer, phone, the single sticky note she'd written on—and walked to the door.
Then she stopped.
On the floor, just inside the threshold, someone had placed a small paper cup. The kind that came from the coffee shop on the ground floor. Still warm.
No note. No name. Just coffee. Black, no sugar.
She picked it up and took a sip.
He remembered.
Victoria Hart walked out of Meridian Group with the coffee in her hand and something dangerous blooming in her chest.
She didn't have a name for it yet. She didn't want one.
But it was there. Small and warm and absolutely unwelcome.
Just like the coffee.