He Shoved Her Into a Luggage Cart — Then Found Out She Owned Half His Private Jet

Chapter 02 - The Drawer

The office smelled like burnt coffee and wet nylon, jackets dripping on hooks by the door. Grant sat across the desk from Marcus with his hands folded too tightly, knuckles pale.

Kayla stood by the filing cabinet instead of sitting. She liked having something solid at her back.

"I want a lawyer in this room," Grant said.

"You can have six lawyers in this room," Marcus said. "It won't change what's in that cabinet."

He nodded at Kayla. She didn't need to be told twice.

She pulled the second drawer open. It stuck the way it always did, and she yanked it the extra inch it needed, the way her father used to.

Inside, a manila folder labeled MAINT / SIGN-OFF ANOMALIES sat where she'd left it, rubber band snapped twice around the middle.

She set it on the desk. Didn't open it yet.

"Four months ago isn't the first one," she said.

Grant's eyes flicked to the folder like it might bite him.

"I found the first discrepancy back in March," Kayla said. "A signature that didn't match the inspector's file copy. I told myself it was a clerical thing. People get sloppy."

She opened the folder.

Eleven pages. Eleven dates going back two years.

"Then I found a second one in April," she said. "Then I stopped telling myself things."

Grant leaned forward despite himself.

"That doesn't mean I ordered it," he said.

"Didn't say you signed anything," Kayla said. "I said your jets are the ones in the folder. All of them. Every single sheet."

Marcus hadn't touched the folder yet. He was watching Grant's face instead, the way a man watches weather rolling in.

"Who else has access to that cabinet," Grant said.

"Three of us," Kayla said. "Me, Marcus, and whoever unlocked that maintenance panel on your jet an hour before you landed tonight without logging it."

Grant went quiet.

Not the quiet of a man with nothing to hide. The quiet of a man doing math.

"I want to know who," he said finally. Quieter now. Almost human.

"So do we," Marcus said.

He finally opened the folder, flipped through three pages, and stopped on the fourth. His jaw tightened in a way Kayla had only seen once before, the night her father's memorial service ran long and someone said something cruel about how Walt died owing money he didn't owe.

"This is my handwriting," Marcus said. Voice flat.

Kayla's stomach dropped.

"Copied," she said quickly. "Not yours. Someone traced your sign-off style from an old file. I checked the loop on your G, it's off by a hair on every one of these."

Marcus exhaled slow through his nose.

"Somebody's been building a paper trail that points at me," he said, "using a signature that would take real access to forge convincingly."

"Or," Grant said, and something shifted behind his eyes, something calculating instead of furious, "somebody's been building one that points wherever it's convenient. Depending on who's asking."

It was the first smart thing he'd said all night.

Kayla hated that he was right.

"We're not deciding anything tonight," Marcus said, closing the folder. "Grant, your jet stays grounded until an independent inspector clears it, full stop, non negotiable."

"And the Geneva meeting."

"Charter something else," Marcus said. "Or don't go. Neither is my problem."

Grant stood, chair scraping, and for a moment Kayla thought he'd start shouting again. Instead he looked at her, really looked, like he was recalculating something.

"You've been planning this a long time," he said.

"I've been doing my job a long time," Kayla said. "The planning part was recent."

He almost smiled. It wasn't friendly.

"We'll talk again," he said, and walked out into the rain without an umbrella.

Kayla watched the door swing shut behind him.

"Eleven pages isn't the whole drawer," she said quietly, once he was gone.