Chapter 3

Charlotte Gallegos POV:

For the next few days, Emmitt Mccormick' s dusty office became my sanctuary. It smelled of stale coffee, old paper, and a faint, lingering trace of whiskey, but to me, it smelled like the truth. It was a world away from the sterile, perfumed atmosphere of the Gallegos estate, where lies were the currency of choice.

Emmitt was methodical, cynical, and brutally direct. He didn't offer sympathy; he demanded facts. We started with the original investigation file, which I had managed to copy from the company server years ago, a small act of defiance I never knew I'd use.

"This is too clean," Emmitt grumbled, spreading the printed documents across his desk. He stabbed a finger at a bank statement. "A single wire transfer to an offshore account? In your name? An amateur move. Someone committing a crime this big, someone smart enough to steal a nine-figure bid, would be smart enough to layer the payments. This wasn't designed to be hidden; it was designed to be found."

A knot of tension in my chest, one I'd carried for a decade, loosened just a little. It was the first time anyone had looked at the "evidence" and seen it for what it was: a stage-managed performance.

"And this burner phone," he continued, picking up a photo of the cheap phone the investigation had 'discovered' in my old desk. "Bought with cash from a convenience store two blocks from your apartment. It's almost insulting. It's like the killer leaving a signed confession at the crime scene."

"Ashton said it was proof of my arrogance," I murmured, the memory of his scathing accusation still sharp. "He said I thought I was too smart to get caught."

"No," Emmitt said, his eyes sharp and focused on me. "Your brother is an arrogant bastard, but he's not a detective. He saw what he was meant to see. What he wanted to see."

He was right. Ashton had always been jealous of my aptitude for design, of our father's pride in my architectural talent. The scandal wasn't just a business problem for him; it was an opportunity. It allowed him to cast me as the villain and himself as the savior, cementing his control over the company and the family.

Our first real task was to trace the money. Not the money that went into the fake account in my name, but the money Carmella might have received.

"She wouldn't have been paid by wire," Emmitt reasoned, pacing in front of his evidence board. "Too traceable. She's smarter than that. We're looking for something else. A sudden windfall. A new car, a down payment on a condo, a large 'gift' from a 'relative'."

Using old financial records I had access to from my administrative role, we began to cross-reference Carmella's known expenditures with company payroll. For weeks, it was a dead end. She had been careful. Her lifestyle had improved after she and Ashton got together, but it was all explainable by his generosity.

The breakthrough came from an unexpected place: my own memories. Emmitt was questioning me about the days leading up to the leak, trying to jog any forgotten details.

"Think, Charlotte. Anything out of the ordinary. Anyone new hanging around? Any strange conversations?"

I closed my eyes, forcing myself back to that time. The memory was clouded with the shock and trauma that followed, but I pushed through it. I remembered the long nights I'd spent in the office, finalizing the details of the bid. I remembered Carmella, always there, bringing me coffee, offering a supportive word, her presence a constant, friendly hum in the background.

"She was always asking questions," I said slowly, a fuzzy picture coming into focus. "About the bid. She framed it as professional curiosity. She said she wanted to understand the construction side of the business better, to help her with marketing."

"What kind of questions?"

"Specifics. About the proprietary materials we were sourcing, the structural innovations. The very things that made our bid unique. The things the competitor, Crestone, somehow managed to replicate in their final proposal."

And then, another memory surfaced. A conversation I'd overheard. Carmella on the phone, her voice low and tense. She was talking about her 'sick aunt' in another state, about needing to send money for 'medical bills'.

"Her aunt," I said, my eyes flying open. "She was always talking about a sick aunt. She said she was sending her money."

Emmitt stopped pacing. A hunter's stillness came over him. "Did she have an aunt?"

"I... I don't know. I just assumed she did."

It took Emmitt less than twenty-four hours to find the truth. Carmella Nichols was an only child from a small town. Both of her parents were deceased. She had no aunts, no uncles, no close relatives to speak of.

The 'sick aunt' was a fiction. A cover for where her money was going. Or, more likely, where it was coming from.

"She wasn't sending money," Emmitt said, his voice grim as he hung up the phone with a contact. "She was receiving it. Small, structured cash deposits into a regional bank account under her mother's maiden name. Always just under the ten-thousand-dollar reporting threshold. Over six months, it added up to nearly a quarter of a million dollars."

He pinned a printout of the bank records to the board. There it was. The money. Not in one clean, obvious wire transfer, but laundered slowly, carefully, through a ghost.

My breath hitched. It was real. This wasn't just a theory anymore. This was evidence.

"This is it," I whispered, my hand reaching out to touch the paper, as if its reality could be absorbed through my fingertips.

"It's a start," Emmitt cautioned, his gaze softening slightly. "It proves she had a secret source of income that coincides with the scandal. But it doesn't prove it came from Crestone Holdings. For that, we need to find the person on the other end of the transaction. The person at Crestone who paid her."

He drew a circle around the name of the rival company on the board.

"And that," he said, turning to me, a glint of challenge in his eyes, "is where things get dangerous."