Chapter 4 - THE SECOND VIDEO
The emergency board call began at nine.
Richard appeared in a navy suit.
Beatrice sat beside him.
Richard opened smoothly.
“Sarah’s health is our primary concern. But the Grand Monarch project cannot wait for a family dispute.”
He presented the numbers.
Seventeen million in overruns.
Thirty-one million still owed.
Hundreds of workers and contractors exposed if financing stalled.
All real.
Then he attacked the recording.
“Patrick moved toward me aggressively. I tried to steady Sarah. She lost her balance.”
Patrick nearly exploded.
Sarah touched his arm.
Then the board secretary received another video.
A second guest had recorded twenty seconds earlier.
Sarah:
“Dad, don’t touch me.”
Patrick was still several feet away.
Beatrice:
“Make her listen.”
Richard walked toward Sarah and grabbed her dress.
Only then did Patrick move.
Richard’s story weakened instantly.
An independent director asked Beatrice why she had accused Sarah of faking.
Beatrice answered:
“She’s alive.”
Silence.
Even Richard looked at her.
Sarah spoke quietly.
“My daughter is in intensive care.”
The board chair separated the violence issue from the financing.
Sarah agreed.
Then surprised everyone.
“I am not voting against financing.”
Richard looked up.
“I’m voting against this structure.”
She demanded forty-eight hours for an independent review of the loan, construction costs, and related-party vendors.
Richard called it delay.
The board approved it anyway.
Minutes later, Rachel received a confidential vendor list from the company controller.
Three names were highlighted.
One belonged to Jade’s boyfriend.
One belonged to Beatrice.
One to an old friend of Richard.
Total payments:
More than four million dollars.
Rachel turned the list toward Sarah.
“This may be why they don’t want an audit.”
The staircase had cracked open something much larger than a family lie.
The controller added a warning.
“These payments may be explainable individually. The problem is that no one disclosed the relationships together.”
Sarah understood immediately.
One invoice could look harmless.
A dozen harmless invoices could become a system.
Richard’s strength had always been compartmentalization. He kept each person seeing only enough to approve the next step.
May you like
The audit’s danger was not that it might find one giant theft.
It was that it might finally place every small favor on the same page.
