Chapter 17 - The Contract With His Signature
Three days later, the board presented me with twelve additional contracts.
All involved Atlas Strategic Technologies.
All had been approved during the final eighteen months of my father's life.
The room felt colder with every page.
“These signatures are his,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Then what exactly are you investigating?”
The chief auditor answered.
“Whether your father knowingly approved the transactions.”
I looked at him sharply.
“You think he stole from his own company?”
“No.”
“Then say what you mean.”
He hesitated.
“We think someone used his authority.”
That possibility was worse.
Because my father had been careful.
He had discovered Victoria's crimes before his death.
He had moved his assets into the secure vault.
He had trusted Caleb.
He had trusted me.
Would he have overlooked something this large?
That night, I went through his old study.
Nothing had changed.
His military journals were still on the shelf.
His medals remained in their cases.
His desk stood exactly where I remembered it.
I opened the bottom drawer.
Inside was a notebook.
I had never seen it before.
The first page contained a single sentence.
When numbers stop making sense, look at who benefits.
I sat down.
The handwriting was unmistakably his.
I read the next page.
Then the next.
He had been tracking Atlas.
Not because he trusted them.
Because he suspected someone inside Vance Defense Systems was redirecting contracts.
My hands began to shake.
My father had known.
But there was something else.
At the bottom of the final page was a date.
Three days before his death.
Under it, he had written:
If I cannot finish this, Caleb will know where to look.
I called my husband.
He arrived twenty minutes later.
I handed him the notebook.
He read silently.
Then looked at me.
“Your father didn't leave this for the board.”
“No.”
“He left it for us.”
I nodded.
And suddenly the investigation wasn't about protecting my father's name.
May you like
It was about finishing something he had started.
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