The woman he couldn't destroy

Chapter Three: The Second Look

Evelyn had barely gotten out of bed when she found him in her background check at six the next morning. The check did not return anything useful — it didn't.

Lucien Vale's profile was so clean it almost looked like it was made up. He owned a Strategic consulting firm that had been registered in California three years ago and she hated to admit, his client list was quite impressive, they were all verified and legitimate. There were no criminal records, civil litigation or financial red flags.

He had his formal education at Stanford, with a work history that tracked perfectly and references that checked out to the last detail.

Too perfect.

But she had been in business long enough to know that genuinely clean people had minor blemishes; a late payment somewhere, an employment gap that needed explaining or even a reference who took two days to call back. But this man, this Lucien Vale had none of those things, instead, his profile read like a document rather than lived.

She flagged it, set it aside and went to work.

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

That morning at work was relentless. One of Sterling's Sacramento partners called at seven needing reassurance and clarity, and she delivered.

Two of her board members had requested individual meetings, so she scheduled them for the afternoon. Sterling's legal team sent a forty page brief on the Nevada shell corporation activity her investigator had discovered, she read it in full and her realizations made her sit very still at her desk for a moment before she picked up her phone.

The shell corporations weren't connected to Paul.

She had assumed they were but the legal team's analysis traced the Nevada activity to a source that had no visible connection to Harrington Group. It had a different structure and methodology entirely. That meant Paul Harrington was not the only person making moves against Sterling Holdings, and the anonymous caller had been telling the truth.

She was still sitting with that when Marcus appeared in her doorway.

"Miss Sterling. There's someone in the lobby."

"I have a full morning, Marcus." She replied, looking irritated.

"I know and I'm sorry.." He paused in the way that meant what he was about to say next was going to complicate her full morning. "But he says his name is Lucien Vale and you two met last night." Another pause. "He also says he has something that belongs to you."

Evelyn looked up slowly from her desk.

"Something that belongs to me?" she repeated.

"Yes ma'am. And he wouldn't specify what."

She held Marcus's gaze for a moment. "Send him up."

***********

He walked into her office, looking around the space like he had known what it would look like but just wanted to verify.

"Hello, Mr. Vale."

"Miss Sterling.I apologize for coming in unannounced." He looked at her across the desk.

"No you don't," she said.

"No," he agreed. "I don't."

"So what do you want? My secretary said, "You have something of mine." She replied, leaning back in her chair and looking at him steadily.

He reached into his jacket, pulled and placed a phone that had its screen cracked, on her desk.

She looked at it without touching it. It was not her phone.

"That's not mine," she said.

"I know," he said. "But what's on it is."

She looked up at him.

"I found it this morning," he said. "It was three blocks from the Aurelian estate and I think someone had dropped it in a storm drain. It would have been completely unrecoverable if I hadn't gone when I did." He began.

“You found a phone in the storm drain and I'm supposed to be worried about it?" She asked, looking at him sideeyed.

“Yes, what's in it would be of great significance to you." He began.

“No, it wouldn't." She countered.

“Yes, it would. Trust me on that." He assured me.

“Okay… so what's in it for me??" She asked, beginning to grow impatient as she went back to scanning the documents on her table.

"The details in it showed documents registered to a shell company in Nevada related to your company and the last three calls made from it were all to the same number." He held her gaze. "... it was a direct line to this office."

Her eyes shot open as the room grew very quiet. She picked up the phone and clicked on the dialpad, true to what he had said, it was Sterling's direct line and the same number her father had used, even the anonymous caller had used it two nights ago. Only twelve people alive had access to.

"And I think someone has been monitoring your communication before the gala," Lucien said. "Tracking who called you, when, and from where. The phone in the drain was a relay device because it kept bouncing the signal from your office line through a secondary source to make tracing impossible." He paused. "Someone in your world has been very carefully making sure you can't find them."

Evelyn looked back to the phone on her desk.

Then she looked at him — this man with his too-clean background was standing in her office at nine in the morning because he had found a surveillance device in a storm drain three blocks from a gala they had both attended. And he expects her to believe that s**t?? How convenient!

"So tell me, how did you find it?" she asked

"I was looking for it."

"You were looking for it? Why? Was it yours and suddenly you realized you could not find it?"

"Because I saw something last night that concerned me." He didn't elaborate, he just let it sit there, which she was beginning to understand was a habit of his. To say things and let them sit, so that she comes to them.

"Mr. Vale," she said. "When you came in here, I'm sure you saw how busy I was, I don't have time for this. So you either tell me what you saw or we end this conversation. Right now."

He was quiet for a moment.

"When you were talking to Paul Harrington last night, that conversation lasted four minutes and twelve seconds. I knew because I was watching from across the room. Harrington said something that made you go still." He stated, looking at her directly.

"Though not so visibly because most people wouldn't have caught it. But you went still and whatever he said, changed how you were moving through the room for the rest of the evening."

She said nothing.

"He told you your phones were compromised, didn't he?” Lucien said, as if taking a wild guess.

Her silence was all the answer he needed.

Lucien nodded once.

"That means Paul Harrington knows about the surveillance. Which means either he had set it up or he knows who did." He paused. "But either way, whatever he told you last night, he did because he wanted to mark his territory and he just wanted to make sure you knew he was still in control."

Evelyn stood up from behind her desk and walked to the window into the morning light.

"Who are you?" she asked, keeping her gaze outside.

"I told you last night."

"No, you didn't. You only told me your name and your profession." She turned from the window to face him. "That's not what I'm asking."

He looked at her for a long moment. Something moved in his expression — not quite a decision, more like the moment before one.

"I'm someone who has been watching Sterling Holdings for a long time," he said. "Not as an enemy but someone who understood long before you did that whatever is happening to this company is bigger and older than Paul Harrington." He paused. "And I'm the only person who believes you're the only person positioned to stop it."

"Why me?"

"Because you're the only person they underestimated."

She studied him. That was either the most useful thing anyone had told her since her father died or the best manipulation she had ever encountered. Now the problem was that she couldn't yet tell which.

"I'm going to have my team run a check on you," she said. "I'm talking deeper than the standard check."

"I know," he said. "I'd be concerned if you didn't."

"And if I find something?"

"You won't." He held her gaze. "But you'll find some things that don't make immediate sense. When that happens I'd rather you came to me directly than drew your own conclusions."

She looked at him for a long moment.

"Leave me a number, a real one." she said finally.

He picked up the pen on her desk — her father's pen, the one thing she hadn't moved since the day she took the office and wrote eleven digits on the corner of the brief sitting open in front of her before setting the pen down carefully.

Then he walked to the door and stopped with his hand on the frame.

"Miss Sterling." He didn't turn around. "The Nevada shell corporations your legal team flagged this morning." A pause. "Don't brief your full board on what you find, at least not yet." His voice was quiet and careful. "One of the people in that room already knows."

He walked out.

Evelyn stood still in her office in the silence he left behind and looked at the eleven digits in the corner of her brief, the cracked phone on her desk and the pen her father had used every day for forty years sitting slightly out of place from where it had always lived.

She started pacing back and forth before she picked up her phone and called her head of security.

"I need a full sweep of this building," she said. "Check every floor, line and device." She paused. "And Daniel, do it quietly before the afternoon board meeting."

She hung up and looked at the door Lucien Vale had just walked through and she knew instantly that something about this man was either going to save her company or destroy everything she had left. And she was yet to decide which one frightened her the most.

Her desk phone rang through an internal line and it was Marcus.

"Miss Sterling. About the afternoon board meeting." A pause that told her everything before he said it. "Gerald Marsh just cancelled and so did Richard Coles." Another pause. "...and they had both cited the same reason."

"Which was?"

"A prior engagement." Marcus's voice became careful now, because what he was about to say was enough to make her crash out and he couldn't afford to get her in that position as it stands now.

"The engagement they cited is a private lunch and I ran some checks and figured they’ll be at the Harrington Group office in Century City."

Evelyn stood completely still.

Gerald Marsh and Richard Coles. These were two of the longest serving board members, since her father started this company and now, here they were, about to have lunch with Paul Harrington, the son of the same man who had almost brought the company to ruins. Even so, all of these happened on the same morning Lucien Vale had told her not to brief her full board yet.

How low would these people stoop, just to bring her down? The question turned itself over and over in her mind.

“What time would they be leaving?" She asked, clearing her throat.

"According to the schedule I'm seeing here, they're set to leave by 1pm today.” He replied, taken aback by her calmness because the Evelyn he knew would have stormed into their offices and confronted them.

“Okay…and how possible would it be to follow them?" She asked again, as various thoughts kept running through her mind

" Very possible, ma'am.”

"Alright, Marcus. Make sure you keep an eye on them, find and update me on whatever you're able to find.”

" Yes ma'am.” She hung up.

She picked up the corner of the legal brief and looked intently at the eleven digits before picking up her phone and dialing the number.

"I need to meet," she said. "Tonight."

"I know," Lucien said, as if he had been expecting her call.

That alone got her more worried than anything else.