I pull out my phone and flick through my contacts. “Something pretty close to that.”
We will track this son of a bitch to the ends of the earth and bring his empire crumbling down.
Chapter twenty-two
Callisto
Lector Wren folds his arms and leans them on his desk as I slide into the leather seat opposite. It’s been a long time since I saw him wearing something other than sweatpants and a tank top, but now he looks every bit the polished Chief Financial Officer in his dove gray three-piece tailored suit.
“Well, this is a lovely surprise,” he says, smiling at me. “My son here in the office, in the flesh.”
Have Lector and Simon always called me their son? Maybe they did, but I hadn’t noticed because I was busy grieving the other father I lost.
“Yeah, it’s been a while,” I murmur, glancing out at Laversham’s cityscape spread at our feet. From here, the entire city feels like a picnic lunch, ready for devouring. Guess I avoided the Wren headquarters ever since Dad passed, as if he were the only Wren who made this place run.
Lector shuffles bound company reports to the side. “I’ll send for a coffee. What’ll you have?”
“Black, unsweetened.”
His smile deepens. “I should’ve known. Alistair was the same.” He buzzes the orders through his intercom and then taps one buffed nail. “You said you needed help with something?”
I pull the business summary page out of my laptop bag. “Remember when you guys were thinking of expanding into the hardware business, but you did some digging and found they operated a shell company and things weren’t above board?”
His mouth tightens in annoyance. “Spade Outlet. Such a waste of time, that company.”
I slide the page across his desk. “Could you do the same digging on Rigton Limited?”
“Something smells fishy?” He picks up the page.
I nod. “You could say that. I can’t tell you the details, but if it’s okay with you, I’ll call the OCB team I’m working with and put them on speakerphone.”
Lector’s eyes light up. “Oh, now this feels like a real challenge! Surely the OCB has proper analysts for this sort of thing.”
“Yeah, they do.” I grin, catching his enthusiasm. “But I reckon you might be faster.”
“Ooh, a little competition, then,” he says with glee, sliding his phone across the desk for me to dial. “I’m on board.”
I chuckle. Lector is competitive. How else could he run a company with a net worth of 100 billion dollars? For that matter, he couldn’t have weaseled his way into Alistair Wren’s life without some serious balls. Simon might have the alpha persona, but Lector’s a ruthless killer with bottom dollars and spreadsheets.
Once I get the OCB team on the call, we run through a few legal matters to protect Lector, and then he examines our findings so far.
“So Rigton Limited ceased trading two years ago and isn’t under receivership, but somehow still issues payments?” Lectorslides reading glasses over his eyes and lifts a keyboard out from a shelf under the desk. “Let’s see if they left a shares trail.”
His taps on the keys fill the silent room. “As I thought. Public merger twenty-three months ago.” Lector turns the screen, showing me a share-management database. “You can hide a lot about a company, but the minute you issue shares, either privately or publicly, you leave footprints.”
I lean in and scan the highlighted entry. “Merged with DoorKit?”
Lector nods, but his mind already seems far away. He leaves the screen angled but opens more tabs and hops through databases, murmuring softly to himself, “This makes no sense.”
“Is there a problem?” Analyst William asks.
“Yes, but let me dig,” Lector says, adjusting his glasses. He says nothing, and I leave him to hunt, flipping open my laptop to look up the merger details. A few old financial news headlines mention the two companies joining, but with little fanfare. This kind of small merger happens all the time.
Lector removes his glasses, and they clink as he sets them down on the desk. “Well, this is thoroughly cooked, let me tell you.”
“What did you find?” I ask.
“Rigton Limited merged into DoorKit on April 19th. We have the company closure listed right here, but—” The financial whiz switches tabs and hovers his cursor over another line. “On April 20th, Rigton Limited registered in the East Coast, but as a proprietary limited company.” He snorts. “They used the name ‘Rigton Limited’ instead of the ‘limited’ business type. Pretty sure that’s illegal to begin with, but look at the timestamp.” He circles a time with his mouse. “Most people would never see this unless they were a business broker or worked with the taxation office.”
