Chapter 1 - “Why me?”
“You notice things.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“You don’t seem frightened of telling me when something is wrong.”
“I’ve known you for forty minutes.”
“Exactly.”
Taylor folded her hands.
“I need to say something.”
“Go ahead.”
“If you’re doing this because those women embarrassed me, don’t.”
His expression changed.
“My mother worked until nearly one this morning repairing this jacket. My family needs money badly enough that I took two buses to get here because my car needs a transmission I can’t afford.”
She swallowed.
“But I don’t want charity disguised as employment.”
Victor studied her.
Then he pushed the folder closer.
“Find out whether this invoice is real.”
“That’s your answer?”
“That is my answer.”
Taylor looked down.
Then back at him.
“When do I start?”
“Monday.”
At home that evening, Margaret Nelson was hemming a pair of mechanic’s pants for a neighbor when Taylor walked through the kitchen door.
Her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was doing algebra at the table.
Eleven-year-old Lily was drawing flowers around the edge of a spelling worksheet.
Margaret looked up.
“How bad?”
Taylor dropped her purse.
“Why does everybody assume it was bad?”
“You have your driving-test face.”
Ben grinned.
“She failed that twice.”
“Thank you, Benjamin.”
“Always here for you.”
Taylor sat down.
Then she told them.
The laughter.
The insult.
The number.
The door opening.
Victor Anderson.
The offer.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Lily whispered, “You work for a billionaire?”
“I review invoices.”
“That is the least exciting possible way to say that.”
Margaret had not laughed.
Her eyes were shining.
“You earned this.”
“I haven’t earned anything yet.”
Her mother touched the repaired sleeve.
“You earned the chance.”
Taylor carried those words with her Monday morning.
Within three weeks, Taylor understood why Victor had been uneasy.
Someone was stealing.
Not recklessly.
Not greedily enough to attract immediate attention.
Patiently.
Small amounts were spread across departments and hidden inside ordinary business expenses.
Feed prices rose without corresponding market increases.
Equipment repairs appeared with no maintenance logs.
Truck mileage reimbursements exceeded GPS records.
Temporary labor invoices included names that did not appear on security sign-ins.
Taylor built spreadsheets at night.
She compared dates.
She called farm supervisors without telling them why.
She learned which managers remembered everything and which ones signed papers without reading them.
And the deeper she looked, the worse it became.
Victor found her in the office at 9:17 one Thursday night.
“You know we have lights here tomorrow too.”
Taylor didn’t look away from her monitor.
“I’m investigating whether they’re billing us for tomorrow’s electricity.”
He set a coffee beside her.
She glanced up.
“You remembered.”
“Two cream. No sugar.”
“I’m concerned that you remember my coffee but not that meeting you missed this morning.”
“I own the company. I’m allowed to disappoint management.”
“That explains a lot.”
He laughed.
It surprised her how rarely he did.
Then he saw the papers on her desk.
“What did you find?”
She slid a sheet toward him.
“North Creek Dairy purchased nearly identical quantities of feed for twenty-six months.”
“So?”
“Price increased seventy-eight percent.”
Victor’s amusement disappeared.
“Commodity fluctuations?”
“I checked.”
“Transportation?”
“No.”
“Storage?”
“No.”
She pointed to the vendor.
“Every major increase began after Owen Foster became general manager.”
Victor leaned back slowly.
Owen Foster had worked for the Anderson family for twenty-seven years.
He had attended Victor’s high-school graduation.
He had stood near the family at Robert Anderson’s funeral.
“My father trusted Owen.”
Taylor’s answer was quiet.
“Then we should be especially careful before accusing him.”
Victor looked at her.
“You think he’s innocent?”
“I think evidence should decide.”
The office became silent.
Then Victor nodded.
“Keep going.”
Outside Victor’s office, the atmosphere was less generous.
People noticed Taylor.
They noticed that she had arrived for a low-level interview and somehow ended up with an office beside the owner.
They noticed confidential folders.
They noticed Victor stopping at her desk.
And because people disliked unanswered questions, they invented answers.
Taylor heard them.
She just pretended she didn’t.
“She came in dressed like she was applying at a discount store.”
“He feels sorry for her.”
“Why would he give someone like that access to financials?”
“Maybe the access isn’t about accounting.”
That one hurt.
Taylor went into the restroom, locked herself in a stall, and stayed there until the shaking stopped.
Then she washed her face and returned to work.
Victor noticed anyway.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been answering me with one-word sentences for forty minutes.”
“I’m working.”
“Taylor.”
She looked at him.
For a moment, she wanted to tell him.
Then she remembered what they would say if he defended her.
She had run crying to the billionaire heir.
She had needed protection.
“No,” she said.
“No what?”
“Don’t fix this for me.”
He frowned.
“You don’t even know what I’m planning.”
“You have the face of a man planning to fire somebody.”
“That’s apparently an identifiable expression.”
“Very.”
She told him what she had heard.
His jaw hardened.
“I’ll address it tomorrow.”
“No.”
“They have no right—”
“If you defend me publicly, they’ll believe I needed you to.”
“That shouldn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Victor looked frustrated.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Let my work embarrass them.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he nodded.
“All right.”
By the end of the second month, the suspicious payments approached $410,000.
The pattern involved five vendors, three divisions, and accounts connected to company properties.
Taylor printed everything.
Victor stared at the conference-room wall where she had arranged the documents.
“This isn’t one dishonest employee.”
“No.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Best guess.”
“At least two.”
The door opened.
Caroline Anderson entered.
Victor’s cousin had been administrative director for twelve years.
She was elegant, composed, and famous inside the company for remembering every employee’s name.
After Robert died, she had become one of Victor’s most trusted advisers.
“What’s all this?”
Victor moved slightly in front of the wall.
“Internal review.”
Caroline’s eyes sharpened.
“Administration reports to me.”
“For ordinary operations.”
“And I wasn’t informed because?”
“Because we don’t know what we’re looking at yet.”
Caroline’s gaze shifted to Taylor.
The smile returned.
“Well, if our new accounting prodigy needs anything, she knows where to find me.”
“Thank you,” Taylor said.
Caroline turned to leave.
For less than a second, her eyes stopped on one invoice.
Owen Foster’s name appeared in the approval box.
Taylor saw the pause.
So did Victor.
After Caroline left, Taylor asked, “Do you trust her?”
Victor’s answer came too quickly.
“She’s family.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
His expression tightened.
“We grew up together.”
“Still not the question.”
He sat down.
“My father trusted her.”
Taylor softened.
“I’m not accusing her.”
“I know.”
“But?”
Victor looked toward the closed door.
“I don’t know who I trust anymore.”
The next week he brought in Daniel Mercer, a retired forensic accountant who had worked with Robert Anderson for decades.
Daniel was seventy-one, blunt, and unimpressed by wealth.
He spent ninety minutes examining Taylor’s work before saying anything.
Finally, he looked over his glasses.
“Who taught you?”
“Mostly professors.”
“No.”
Taylor blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“Who taught you to look for people inside numbers?”
She considered that.
“My mother.”
Daniel nodded as though that made perfect sense.
Working with him changed everything.
Taylor had been finding inconsistencies.
Daniel taught her to build a case.
They followed bank registrations, property records, vendor ownership, timestamps, purchase approvals, and altered documents.
Eventually they found an account receiving money through three shell vendors.
The address connected to the account belonged to a cottage on Anderson property leased to Owen Foster.
Victor stared at the page.
“It’s Owen.”
“Maybe,” Taylor said.
Victor turned.
“His address is on the account.”
“Which means either he opened it or someone wanted us to believe he did.”
Daniel pointed at her.
“That’s why she’s good.”
Victor gave Taylor an exhausted look.
“You both enjoy ruining certainty.”
“Certainty is expensive when it’s wrong,” Daniel said.
During those weeks, Victor and Taylor became close in ways neither intended.
It happened in ordinary moments.
Coffee.
Late meetings.
Long drives to farm sites.
The afternoon Victor carried a box of old sewing materials to Taylor’s mother because Daniel’s late wife had left fabric Margaret could use.
Margaret refused to let Victor leave without lunch.
He sat at their small kitchen table eating pot roast beside Ben and Lily as though billionaires routinely spent Saturdays in houses with cracked tile and a refrigerator covered in school magnets.
After lunch, Taylor walked him toward his car.
“You brought groceries too.”
“Daniel brought supplies.”
“The oranges?”
Victor looked guilty.
“Possibly me.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Buy citrus?”
“Rescue people.”
He stopped walking.
“I wasn’t rescuing anyone.”
“You saw our kitchen.”
“I saw your family.”
“And?”
“And I liked them.”
Taylor looked away.
Victor became quiet.
“There’s something else.”
She knew before he said it.
Maybe she had known for weeks.
“I care about you.”
The road seemed suddenly too still.
Victor continued quickly.
“I know I’m your employer. I know that makes this complicated. I’m not asking you for anything.”
“Victor—”
“If you want me to pretend I never said it, I will.”
Taylor laughed nervously.
“That sounds miserable.”
He looked at her.
She exhaled.
“The problem isn’t that I don’t feel something.”
His expression changed.
“The problem is that I do.”
He stepped closer but did not touch her.
Taylor continued.
“People already think I got my job because you felt sorry for me.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know.”
“They can think whatever they want.”
“No. You can afford not to care.”
That landed harder than she meant it to.
Victor looked down.
Taylor softened her voice.
“When people look at you, they see your name first. When they look at me, they are waiting for an explanation for why I’m in the room.”
He nodded slowly.
“So what do we do?”
“We don’t let whatever this is become the explanation.”
He held out his hand.
Not romantically.
Almost like a promise.
Taylor took it.
For several weeks, they kept their relationship private.
Then Caroline saw them leaving a restaurant.
Monday morning she intercepted Taylor beside the elevators.
“So now I understand.”
Taylor stopped.
“Understand what?”
“How you became important so quickly.”
Taylor’s stomach tightened.
“If you have a concern about my work, discuss my work.”
Caroline smiled.
“Oh, everyone is.”
By lunch, the rumors had spread.
By afternoon, Taylor realized something worse.
The gossip was not merely cruel.
It was useful.
Someone was preparing to discredit the investigation.
May you like
At the next managers’ meeting, Taylor presented the feed discrepancies.
Owen Foster sat near the end of the table.
Related Stories
