Chapter 8 - The Counter-Ledger
I didn't go back to the office. Instead, I drove straight to a small, nondescript legal storefront in downtown Chicago—a modest firm run by an aging corporate litigator named Thomas Vance, no relation to Arthur, who had represented my grandfather thirty years ago.
Thomas was retired in practice, but when I dropped Elena's black journal and the coroner's report onto his cluttered oak desk, the old fire returned to his eyes. He spent two hours reviewing the documents, his thick glasses sliding down his nose as he cross-referenced the routing numbers with public municipal records.
"This isn't just embezzlement, Daniel," Thomas said, looking up over the frames of his glasses. "This is an institutional conspiracy. Arthur and Richard built a closed-loop system using public housing grants. If you sign those transfer papers at nine o'clock, you are legally admitting guilt to a federal crime."
"They have the board votes, Thomas," I said, pacing across the worn rug of his office. "They have the compliance audits bearing my signature. If I fight them publicly, their legal team will bury me before I even reach a courtroom."
"Then don't fight them in their courtroom," Thomas said, tapping a finger against the open pages of Elena's journal. "Fight them with the one thing they didn't account for."
"What's that?"
"Maya," Thomas said simply.
I stopped pacing. "Maya is a seventeen-year-old girl. She's been used as a pawn in this entire game."
"She isn't a pawn, Daniel. She's the legal heir to the primary holding trust," Thomas corrected me, spinning a legal directory toward me. "When Elena passed away four years ago, her father's estate wasn't divided evenly. Under the original 1995 incorporation documents of Harrison Capital—the ones filed before Arthur manipulated the bylaws—the primary voting shares revert automatically to the eldest direct bloodline descendant in the event of corporate malfeasance."
I stared at the document. "Maya is the majority shareholder?"
"If those municipal funds were illegally diverted, the entire corporate structure is void," Thomas said, his voice dropping into a sharp, urgent register. "Which means the true controlling interest of the firm doesn't belong to Richard, and it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to Maya."
I checked my watch. It was 8:15 AM.
"Where is she?" I asked.
"According to the truancy and housing shelter logs my investigator pulled last night," Thomas said, sliding a slip of paper across the desk, "she’s staying at a youth outreach center on the near North Side. And Richard's legal team is scheduled to meet her there at eight-thirty to get her signature on a waiver."
I grabbed my coat off the back of the chair. "They're trying to lock her out before the board meeting."
May you like
"If they get her signature, the corporate shield becomes untouchable," Thomas warned, standing up and grabbing his briefcase. "Move, Daniel. You have twenty minutes."
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