Chapter 7 - The Paper Trail
The basement archives of the state corporation commission were quiet, smelling of old paper, floor wax, and decades of bureaucracy. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with a low, steady hum that matched the tension in my chest.
Across the steel desk, a clerk named Brenda pushed a thick, heavy plastic sleeve containing certified corporate filings across the counter.
"Here you go, honey," Brenda said, her voice softened by routine sympathy. "Articles of Incorporation for Barrett Enterprises LLC, filed three years and two months ago. Initial capitalization, structural amendments, and the annual reports up through the most recent filing last spring."
I pulled the documents out, my fingers tracing the typewritten lines. I had already seen the basic summary at the police station, but seeing the full ledger was entirely different.
The company hadn't just been a small consulting firm helping local contractors. According to the vendor contracts and equipment leases attached to the filing, Barrett Enterprises had taken out three separate commercial equipment loans, using my military leave-and-earnings statements and my home-of-record address as collateral backing. Worse still, my father hadn't acted alone on every document. Buried on page fourteen of the structural amendment was a secondary signature line—not mine, and not my mother's.
It was Celeste’s.
My breath caught in my throat. I stared at the signature at the bottom of a 2024 corporate resolution transferring fifty thousand dollars of equity into a personal holding account. Celeste Sinclair-Vance. She hadn't just been a bystander enjoying the benefits of my mortgage payments; she had actively signed off on corporate asset reallocations while finishing law school.
"Is everything alright, dear?" Brenda asked, leaning over the counter. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"My sister," I whispered, the words tasting like metal. "She signed off on this too."
"Well, family businesses get tangled up in all kinds of legal messes," Brenda said sympathetically, shaking her head. "People think because they share a last name, they can shuffle signatures back and forth without anyone noticing until the auditors come knocking. But the state doesn't care about family gatherings. Once those digital signatures are timestamped and verified through an official notary seal, everyone listed as an officer is legally tied to the liability."
I thanked the clerk, folded the documents neatly, and slipped them into my canvas bag.
The narrative my parents had spun my entire life—the brilliant, untouchable golden lawyer daughter versus the dull, unrefined enlisted sister—wasn't just a psychological dynamic designed to keep me compliant. It was a functional shield. Celeste hadn't gone to law school on her own merit alone; her lifestyle, her apartment in the city, and her initial seed money for her legal career had been subsidized by loans secured through corporate fraud, backed by my clean military credit profile, and signed off with her own hand when she needed extra cash.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was an incoming call from an unsaved local number. I swiped the screen and pressed it to my ear.
"Maren?" Detective Miller's voice came through, crisp and unhurried. "I just got a call from your father's attorney. They're trying to schedule a voluntary deposition for tomorrow morning. But that's not why I'm calling you."
"Why are you calling, Detective?"
May you like
"Because an hour after I spoke with his lawyer, a second set of financial records was dropped at my desk by a corporate compliance officer from First Meridian Commercial Bank," Miller said. "And your sister’s name is all over the disbursement logs as a primary beneficiary of the fraudulent transfers."
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