“I’ll admit it,” Victor said, his eyes scanning his screen. “I wasn’t on board with keeping Ms. Rhodes after everything, but this concept and the way the code’s structured? It’s solid. Elegant, even.”
Praise didn’t come easily from Victor, and he sounded down right impressed. He went over the code with a fine-tooth comb, as he always did, though he’d already reviewed it at least once at length on his flight home. Tonight wasn’t about discovery. It was about implementation. Which meant he was checking it again, line by line, looking for failure points no one else would think to ask about.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. “And our clients?” he asked. “Does any of this compromise existingsystems or expose data we can’t afford to touch? Are we putting ANY of them at risk?”
The room went quiet.
This was the question that mattered. Actually, the only question that mattered. All of this was for naught if our clients were compromised. That was what had brought this to our attention in the first place. The clause Ms. Rhodes had flagged. The one buried deep enough to grant an international firm access to our proprietary security architecture under the guise of compliance.
“No,” Victor said, without hesitation.
I glanced up. Ethan didn’t move.
“They didn’t reroute the money,” I said, picking up where Victor left off. “That would’ve tripped accounting months ago.”
Victor’s fingers paused over the keyboard.
“They kept a legitimate vendor alive on paper,” I continued. “One we stopped using years ago. The automation stayed in place. The approvals rolled forward. Same invoice cadence. Same dollar ranges. Nothing that crossed a review threshold.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “So we’ve been paying for nothing.”
“No,” I said. “We’ve been paying someone who knew exactly how to look invisible.”
I pulled up the transaction history beside the code.
“The vendor bills as maintenance overhead,” I explained. “Accounting sees consistency. The system sees legitimacy. But there’s no activity to justify it. No access logs, support tickets, or updates. Just invoices.”
Ethan exhaled slowly. “A ghost vendor.”
“Exactly,” Victor said. “Ms. Rhodes’ code doesn’t touch client systems at all. It cross-references payment activity against actual system engagement. The next time that invoice clears,we’ll know who kept the vendor active, who approved its continuation, and where the money ultimately lands.”
Ethan leaned forward. “So we finally get a name.”
“A name,” I confirmed.
“And proof,” Victor added.
Silence settled over the room. They messed with the wrong company. The wrong men. What sucked was that we didn’t catch it before now because it had been done so well and by someone who worked for us. We had a fucking mole. We’d be looking at our hiring practices once this was done.
“This goes live tonight,” Victor finished. “Quietly. Whoever’s been siphoning funds will think nothing’s changed.”
I let my gaze move between them.
My phone buzzed where it sat on the table. I ignored it.
“Everything has changed.” I stared at the screen and my phone buzzed again.
“You might want to get that.” Ethan gestured to my phone.
I scowled at the unknown number. People didn’t have my phone number. It wasn’t something I gave out. It stopped before I had a chance to answer it, but in the next second it rang again.
“Reid,” I snapped.
The blood drained from my head as the voice on the other end spoke, and I gripped the edge of the conference room table.
“What happened?”
Victor and Ethan were on their feet, next to me before I knew it.
