Nerissa feels a stab of pain in her chest seeing her like this, because Seraphina has always seemed unbreakable to her. Even during the darkest moments they’ve shared. But now she looks like nothing more than a desperate mother trying to reach her children through a pane of bulletproof glass.
A pane of glass that others have erected.
Nerissa steps closer and wraps her arms around Seraphina’s waist. Seraphina automatically rests her forehead against her shoulder, exhausted.
“They’re going to turn them against me. I’m sure of it,” Seraphina whispers against her neck. “Adrian knew exactly where to strike me. He knew this would destroy me more than losing my job.”
“You’re not going to lose them,” Nerissa says with conviction, though the truth is that she feels uncertain too. “We’ll fight for them. Together.”
“I’m already losing them,” Seraphina replies.
Nerissa closes her eyes for a moment, not knowing how to fight such deep pain. She only knows how to hold her, offering warmth and companionship.
The early morning hours pass, and exhaustion settles over the apartment, but no one gives up. It’s around 3:30 a.m. when everything changes.
Seraphina suddenly freezes. Her fingers hover motionless over the keyboard while her eyes scan the same row of numbers over and over. Nerissa notices immediately and approaches her with concern.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
Seraphina expands a spreadsheet, then another. She opens an audit file and begins cross-checking figures manually while Callum straightens up to see what’s happening.
“Seph?” Nerissa presses.
Then Seraphina jumps to her feet, and the chair tips backward.
“Oh my God,” she murmurs.
Nerissa feels her own heart skip a beat.
“What did you find?” Maeve asks as well.
Seraphina turns the computer toward them. Her breathing has quickened, and her pupils shine with newfound clarity.
“Look at this…” she says, opening files at breakneck speed. “The bastard has been hiding transfers to limited liability companies. There are also fictitious technical commissions and consulting fees listed here.”
Seraphina points to several highlighted lines with her finger.
“He’s been making fragmented payments every two weeks,” she continues, speaking faster, swept up in the relentlesslogic of the discovery. “Always just below the threshold for an automatic audit, with the same recipient companies and intermediary law firms.”
Callum leans over the screen.
“This is one of the companies I told you about,” he confirms.
“Exactly,” Seraphina agrees. “Adrian has been siphoning money from the investment fund for months. He’s disguised it as consulting fees related to the merger’s upcoming sports expansion. But the recipient companies are shell corporations. There’s no actual service behind them.”
Nerissa visibly pales.
“How much money are we talking about?”
The figure appears on the screen: seven and a half million pounds.
“If the merger had gone through…” Callum begins.
“They would have found out,” Seraphina finishes. “We’ve got him.”
The apartment falls into absolute silence for several seconds. One by one, the pieces begin to fall into place in her mind. The photographs. His threat. The scandal. The simultaneous leak to the press and the board. The immediate collapse of the merger.
Seraphina covers her mouth with her hand, devastated by the truth.
