She stared at me, something calculating replacing her earlier irritation.
“You’re overreacting,” she said. “It was a small moment. People will forget by next week.”
“I won’t,” I said.
I left the party shortly after, informing the event coordinator to continue without me, understanding my absence would generate exactly the kind of gossip Vivienne feared most.
I didn’t particularly care.
The following morning, I met with my chief counsel, David Okonkwo, at my office overlooking the harbor, coffee untouched between us while he walked me through preliminary audit findings.
“We’ve only had twelve hours,” David said, “but there are irregularities worth investigating further within Cross Holdings’ subsidiary structure.”
“What kind of irregularities?” I asked.
“Pension fund allocations,” he said. “Specifically connected to several textile and cleaning service companies they acquired roughly fifteen years ago.”
Something cold settled in my stomach, an instinct I’d learned never to ignore.
“Which companies?” I asked.
David pulled up a document.
He slid it across the desk toward me.
I scanned the list quickly.
Six names.
Familiar names.
I recognized the name immediately.
Sterling Commercial Cleaning, the company my mother had worked for during those exhausting years of night shifts, scrubbing office floors while I studied at the kitchen table of our cramped apartment.
“Cross Holdings acquired Sterling fourteen years ago,” David said. “Around the same time, employee pension contributions appear to have been quietly redirected, restructured in ways that significantly reduced actual payouts to long-term employees.”
He pulled up additional spreadsheets, columns of numbers stretching across multiple screens.
