The Employee's Records
Chapter 07 - The Employee's Records
Renata arrived at Daniel's house the next morning, visibly nervous, a thick folder clutched against her chest like it might try to escape if she loosened her grip.
Grace greeted her warmly but professionally, walking her through exactly what would happen with the documents, what protections existed for her as a whistleblower, what the process would likely look like from here.
Once Renata seemed satisfied, she handed over the folder.
Grace spread the contents across the dining table, and Sophie watched her expression shift from professional neutrality to something sharper as she worked through page after page.
"This is thorough," Grace said finally. "Vendor invoices going back nearly five years, none of which correspond to any verifiable delivery or service based on what I can cross-reference against public business registries."
"Five years," Sophie repeated. "That's well before the marriage plan even started."
"This wasn't a rushed decision made under recent financial pressure," Grace said. "This looks like a long-term pattern that eventually grew large enough to require more drastic measures to cover, which is likely why the marriage idea emerged when it did."
Daniel leaned over one of the invoices, frowning.
"Some of these vendor names," he said slowly, "look familiar. Give me a moment."
He pulled up something on his laptop, cross-referencing a business registry database his firm used for due diligence.
"Two of these vendor companies," he said after a few minutes, "share a registered agent address with a property I recognize. It's owned by Vivienne personally, under a separate holding entity."
Grace looked up sharply.
"She was paying shell companies she owns herself," she said. "Routing company funds directly into her own pocket, dressed up as legitimate vendor payments."
The room went quiet for a moment, the full shape of the theft settling over everyone present.
*Sophie thought of every carefully appointed room in Vivienne's estate, every expensive dinner, every designer dress Vivienne had worn to social events over the years. All of it, apparently, funded in part by money quietly siphoned from the company Sophie's own parents had built.*
"How much are we talking, cumulatively," Sophie asked, voice tight.
"I'd need full forensic accounting to be precise," Grace said. "But based on the volume and consistency of these invoices alone, conservatively, I'd estimate somewhere between six hundred thousand and one million dollars over five years."
Sophie sat back, momentarily unable to process the number fully.
"That's not embezzlement," she said quietly. "That's my entire inheritance, essentially, redirected into her own accounts while she told me the company could barely afford to keep the lights on."
"I want this formally documented and filed as soon as possible," Daniel said, looking at Grace. "Before she has any more time to react to your absence and start covering tracks more aggressively."
"I can have a formal fraud complaint prepared within forty-eight hours," Grace said. "Given the strength of this documentation, combined with the loan file discrepancies we already identified, I'm confident in the filing."
Renata, who'd been quiet throughout most of the technical discussion, finally spoke up.
"I should have said something years ago," she said, voice thick. "I kept telling myself it wasn't my place, that maybe there was some explanation I wasn't seeing."
Sophie reached over and took her hand.
"You're saying something now," she said. "That's what matters."
Renata nodded, wiping her eyes quickly, composing herself.
"What happens to me," she asked Grace, "once this becomes public. Will I still have a job."
"Given your cooperation and the protections in place for reporting fraud like this," Grace said, "you're in a strong position. And frankly, once new leadership is in place at that company, I suspect your honesty here will be remembered very differently than you might expect."
May you like
Sophie looked between Renata and Daniel, something solidifying in her chest that felt, for the first time in this entire ordeal, like actual momentum instead of just survival.
"Let's file it," she said. "Let's make this real."
