His Secret Addiction

Chapter Twenty-Four

Alex's POV

Damien spent Sunday locked in his home office with Marcus and Victoria on video calls.

I stayed out of it until three in the afternoon when he emerged looking like he hadn't slept. He probably hadn't.

"We found two more payments," he said, dropping onto the couch. "Both in the last month. Both to shell companies we thought were closed."

"How much?"

"Thirty thousand total. Small enough to slip through if you're not looking for them." He rubbed his face. "Whoever's doing this knows the system intimately. They know which accounts get flagged and which don't. They know the approval thresholds. They've been here long enough to understand how everything works."

"That could be fifty people."

"I know." He looked at me. "The board meeting is tomorrow at nine. I'm disclosing everything. The shadow vendors, the recent payments, the fact that someone's still active inside the company."

"Sterling's going to destroy you."

"Probably." He said it without emotion. Just fact. "But it's the right thing to do."

I sat next to him. "What do you need?"

"I need to figure out who's making those payments before tomorrow morning." He pulled out his phone, scrolling through something. "Marcus narrowed it down to twelve people who have the right system access. Victoria's running background checks. But we're out of time."

"Can I see the list?"

He handed me his phone. Twelve names. Some I recognized from meetings. Others I'd never heard of. All of them had been with the company for at least five years. All of them worked in finance or operations.

One name stood out.

"Sophie Chen," I said.

"What about her?"

"She's on the list."

"Sophie's our head of legal. She's been helping us through the entire investigation." Damien took the phone back. "She has system access because she needs it for compliance reviews."

"She also has access to every conversation we've had about the investigation. Every strategy session. Every plan." I looked at him. "What if that's why she's been so helpful? To stay ahead of what we know?"

"Sophie's been with the company for fifteen years."

"So was Maya."

He went quiet. I could see him running through the same calculations I was. Sophie had been there for every meeting. Every deposition prep. Every discussion about what the auditors found. She'd drafted the conflict of interest policy. She'd prepared our responses to the investigators. She knew everything.

"We need to check her background," Damien said finally.

"Victoria's already running checks on everyone."

"Not deep enough. I want financials. Property records. Everything." He stood and called Marcus. Put it on speaker.

"We need a full background on Sophie Chen," Damien said when Marcus answered. "Financial records, property ownership, any connection to Maya outside of work."

"Sophie? Damien, she's been our lawyer through this whole thing."

"Which makes her either the most trustworthy person in the building or the most dangerous. I need to know which."

Marcus was quiet for a moment. "I'll make some calls. Give me two hours."

****************

We didn't talk much while we waited.

Damien paced. I made food neither of us ate. The apartment felt smaller than usual, like the walls were closing in with the weight of everything we didn't know yet.

Marcus called back at five thirty.

"Sophie's finances are clean," he said. "No unusual deposits, no offshore accounts we can find. Property records show she owns her apartment in Brooklyn. Paid off the mortgage three years ago, but the payments align with her salary. Nothing stands out."

"What about connections to Maya?"

"They worked together for twelve years. Had lunch regularly. Sophie was at Maya's baby shower planning meetings." Marcus paused. "But so were fifteen other people. There's nothing that suggests a closer relationship than normal coworkers."

Damien's expression didn't change. "Keep digging. There has to be something."

"Or there isn't and we're looking at the wrong person," Marcus said. "Damien, I know you want answers before tomorrow, but we can't manufacture suspicion out of nothing."

After they hung up, I said, "He's right."

"I know."

"So why don't you believe him?"

Damien sat down heavily. "Because my instincts have been wrong about everyone. Maya. The board members who voted with Sterling. The vendors I approved without question." He looked at me. "I don't trust my judgment anymore."

"Then trust mine." I sat across from him. "I worked with Sophie on three projects before any of this started. She's thorough, sometimes annoyingly so. She questions everything. If she was working with Maya, she would have pushed back on something, questioned some detail that didn't fit. But she never did. She just did her job."

"Maybe that was the cover."

"Or maybe she's just a good lawyer who got caught in the same mess we all did." I leaned forward. "You go into that board meeting tomorrow accusing Sophie without proof, Sterling will use it as evidence that you're paranoid and unstable. Is that the position you want to be in?"

He knew I was right. I could see it in his face. But he also knew someone inside the company was still moving money, and the list of people with access was getting shorter.

"What do I tell the board?" he asked.

"The truth. Someone's still active. We're investigating. We'll have answers soon." I paused. "And you bring in outside investigators. Federal, if necessary. Show them you're not trying to handle this internally anymore."

"That makes the company look worse."

"It makes you look honest. There's a difference."

We went to bed around midnight but neither of us slept much.

I woke up at two to find Damien's side of the bed empty. Found him in the living room with his laptop, going through employee files again.

"Come back to bed," I said.

"I'm missing something. I know I am."

"You'll miss it harder if you're exhausted tomorrow." I took the laptop from him. Closed it. "The board meeting is in seven hours. You need to sleep."

"I can't."

"Try anyway."

He let me pull him back to the bedroom. Lay down but didn't close his eyes. Just stared at the ceiling.

"What if I lose the company tomorrow?" he said quietly.

"Then you lose it. And you start over."

"Just like that."

"No, not just like that. It'll be terrible and hard and probably take years to rebuild. But you'll do it anyway because that's who you are." I turned on my side to face him. "And you won't do it alone."

He looked at me then. Really looked. "You'd stay even if I lost everything?"

"I'm not here for the company, Damien. I'm here for you."

He didn't say anything. Just reached for my hand in the dark.

We lay there until the alarm went off at six. Neither of us had slept more than an hour.