Chapter 28 - What He Didn't See
1748 Words
Four months after Damian left, my brother was arrested.
But the story didn't begin with police.
It began with numbers.
Kaelob found them first.
Payments that shouldn't have existed.
Invoices for materials nobody remembered ordering.
Transfers to companies Mum barely recognized.
Individually, they weren't enough to frighten anyone.
Together, they were impossible to ignore.
Mum spent three nights going through records.
Kaelob stayed with her.
So did I, although most of the time I had no idea what I was looking at.
“Here,” Kaelob said, pointing at the screen.
Mum leaned closer.
“What?”
“Same supplier.”
She frowned.
“No.”
“What?”
"We stopped using them two years ago.”
Kaelob clicked.
Another payment.
Then another.
Mum became very still.
“How much?”
“I don't know yet.”
“Find out.”
By sunrise, we knew.
Enough to hurt the company.
Not enough to destroy it.
Yet.
Mum called Victor.
He arrived an hour later with Leyla.
I remember thinking it was strange that she came.
I didn't understand why until much later.
Victor went through the documents.
His face hardened.
“Who accessed these?”
“Kaelob found them,” Mum said.
“That wasn't my question.”
Kaelob looked at him.
“I did.”
Victor looked up.
“Why?”
“Because Mum asked me to help.”
“With the accounts?”
“Yes.”
Victor looked at Mum.
“You gave him access?”
“He works here.”
“He isn't authorized for everything.”
“I didn't access anything restricted,” Kaelob said.
Leyla touched Victor's arm.
“I'm sure it's nothing.”
Nothing.
I hated that word.
Mum closed the laptop.
“Money is missing.”
Leyla's expression changed perfectly.
“What?”
Victor looked at her.
“Go home.”
“Victor—”
“Please.”
She hesitated.
Then nodded.
Before leaving, she touched Mum's shoulder.
“We'll figure it out.”
Mum didn't answer.
For the next two weeks, everyone tried.
Grandpa wanted an independent audit.
Victor said involving outsiders too quickly could damage the company.
Mum insisted.
Vincent didn't know what to believe.
Ellie asked questions she'd never asked before.
Who had access?
Who approved payments?
Why had Alice never noticed?
That one hurt Mum.
“I manage thousands of transactions,” she said.
Ellie folded her arms.
“But this went on for years.”
Leyla sat beside her.
Quiet.
Grandma watched them both.
Then Grandpa spoke.
“No one accuses my daughter in my house.”
Ellie looked embarrassed.
“I wasn't accusing her.”
“It sounded like it.”
Vincent intervened.
Victor tried to calm everyone.
Mum walked outside.
I followed.
“You okay?”
“No.”
It was the first time she didn't pretend.
I hugged her.
My phone was in my hand.
I had messaged Damian that morning.
Something is happening with the company. Can you call me?
He'd answered.
What happened?
For a second, I'd felt relief.
Then nothing.
Hours passed.
I told myself Chloe needed him.
Maxime needed him.
His family was going through hell.
I could wait.
So I did.
The auditors came.
And everything became worse.
They found more.
Much more.
Money had been leaving the company for years.
Some transfers were hidden behind legitimate suppliers.
Others moved through companies none of us knew.
And then they found Kaelob.
His login.
His approvals.
His credentials attached to transactions.
My brother laughed when they told him.
Actually laughed.
“That's impossible.”
Nobody else did.
“I didn't do this.”
Mum stood immediately.
“Of course you didn't.”
Victor said nothing.
That frightened me more than anything.
“Uncle Victor?”
He rubbed his face.
“We need to understand what happened.”
“We know what happened,” I said. “Someone used his account.”
“Rose.”
“He didn't do it.”
“I didn't say he did.”
“You didn't say he didn't.”
Mum looked at Victor.
“He is your nephew.”
“And I'm responsible for this company.”
Grandpa slammed his hand against the table.
“He is your family first.”
Victor looked at him.
Something passed between them.
Something I had never seen before.
“No,” Victor said quietly. “Not when people's livelihoods are at risk.”
That was the moment our family changed.
Not when the police came.
Not when Kaelob was accused.
Then.
Because Grandpa looked at his oldest son as if he didn't recognize him.
And Leyla watched from the other side of the room.
The investigation moved quickly after that.
Too quickly.
Documents appeared.
Emails.
Authorizations.
A connection between Kaelob and one of the outside companies.
He swore he'd never heard of it.
Mum believed him.
I believed him.
Grandma believed him.
Grandpa believed him.
Victor stopped saying what he believed.
Vincent started avoiding us.
Ellie stopped calling Mum.
Leyla called everyone.
She called Mum.
She called Grandma.
She called me.
She cried.
“I can't believe this is happening.”
Neither could I.
That's why it worked.
The morning they arrested Kaelob, I was still in bed.
Mum screamed my name.
I ran downstairs.
There were men at the door.
Kaelob stood in the middle of the room.
“What is happening?”
Mum was shouting.
Kaelob looked at me.
For the first time since this began, he looked scared.
“Rose.”
“What?”
“Call Grandpa.”
“What are they doing?”
“Just call him.”
Then they put handcuffs on my brother.
“No.”
I moved toward him.
Someone stopped me.
“No! He didn't do anything!”
Mum was crying.
Kaelob wasn't.
Not until he looked at her.
“Mum, don't.”
She grabbed his face.
“I'll fix this.”
“Mum.”
“I'll get you out.”
“I know.”
“You didn't do this.”
“I know.”
They pulled him away.
I followed them outside barefoot.
I watched my brother get into a car.
Then I remembered Damian.
I called.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
I typed:
Please call me. It's Kaelob.
I stared at the screen.
Nothing.
For the first time, I was angry.
Not disappointed.
Angry.
I knew what Damian was dealing with.
I knew Chloe was struggling.
I knew Maxime was going through more tests.
But I needed him.
Just once.
I needed him to answer.
He didn't.
Grandpa and Grandma arrived less than an hour later.
Grandma went straight to Mum.
Grandpa looked twenty years older.
“What did Victor say?”
Mum laughed bitterly.
“He says the company has to cooperate.”
Grandpa closed his eyes.
“And Vincent?”
“Nothing.”
That was worse.
By afternoon, we knew the scale of the problem.
The missing money was enormous.
Banks were asking questions.
Accounts could be frozen.
Contracts were at risk.
And if investigators believed Kaelob had acted through the company, everything Grandpa and Grandma had built could collapse with him.
“We need lawyers,” I said.
“We have lawyers,” Mum answered.
“Better ones.”
She looked at me.
“We need money, Rose.”
That was the first time I'd ever heard my mother say those words with fear.
Not we should save.
Not that's too expensive.
We need money.
Grandpa could sell property.
There were assets.
But selling under pressure meant losing enormous value, and some were tied to the company.
Victor refused to approve certain decisions until the investigation was clearer.
For the first time, the man who had spent years acting as head of our family was standing between us and survival.
That evening, Grandma sat at the kitchen table.
She wasn't crying.
I wished she would.
Grandpa stood at the window.
Mum was on the phone with another lawyer.
And I sat there staring at Damian's name.
No answer.
I typed:
Damian, I need you.
I deleted it.
Typed again.
Something really bad happened.
Deleted.
Finally:
I don't know what to do.
Sent.
He read it the next morning.
No reply.
Something inside me cracked.
Not broke.
Not yet.
Just cracked.
Two days later, a man walked into Grandpa's office.
I'd seen him once before.
At a business dinner.
European.
Older than me, but not old. Maybe late twenties.
He came from a family with investments across Europe and Asia and had worked with one of Grandpa's long-standing business partners.
He was wealthy.
Everyone knew that.
But that wasn't what I remembered about him.
I remembered that months earlier, when we'd been introduced, he had spoken to me instead of looking through me.
He remembered my name.
This time, he wasn't there for me.
He was there because he'd heard what was happening to the company.
Victor had apparently already approached investors.
This man had come directly to Grandpa instead.
“I don't want your company,” he said.
Grandpa studied him.
“Everyone wants something.”
“Yes.”
At least he didn't pretend otherwise.
“What do you want?”
“To see the records.”
Mum looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because if your grandson didn't take the money, then someone did.”
Silence.
“And if I'm going to put money into this company, I want to know who.”
My heart started beating faster.
“You'd invest?”
He looked at me for the first time since entering the room.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His eyes stayed on mine for a second too long.
Then he turned back to Grandpa.
“Because I think the company can survive.”
It wasn't an offer to save us.
Not yet.
It wasn't a proposal.
It wasn't love.
It was simply the first time since Kaelob had been taken away that someone walked into the room and spoke as though our family still had a future.
I looked at my phone.
Nothing from Damian.
Then I looked at the stranger standing beside my grandfather.
I didn't know then that one man was slowly disappearing from my life while another was about to become impossible to remove from it.
I only knew my brother was in jail.
My mother was terrified.
My grandparents were watching their life's work collapse.
And somewhere in Germany, the boy I loved kept promising himself he would call me later.
Later wasn't going to save us.
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD