Chapter 17 · The Audit Trap

The archive room at eleven at night smelled like dust and cold toner, and the one emergency light over the shelving threw that sick yellow that makes everybody look guilty.

My heels were off. My phone was jammed between my teeth with the flashlight on, and I had maybe four minutes before the night guard made his loop past the fourth floor.

Four minutes to find the page that would sink Caspian Thorne before his audit sank me.

At four that afternoon he'd filed for an emergency compliance review of Vance & Associates. Three outside lawyers. Nine a.m. sharp. Full access to every client file we held. By breakfast his people would be standing in this room with the lights on and a court order, taking pictures.

Five years I built this practice. Five years of nights exactly like this one, back when I still believed the ring on my finger meant something.

The crank on the shelf caught, then rolled. Iron-gray stacks slid apart and dust jumped up in the beam of my phone.

Trust accounts. Sterling money, spread across eleven entities like a man hiding cash in eleven different mattresses.

I pulled the 2019 ledger. Then 2021.