Chapter 4 - The Phantom Projects
|
I spent the next forty-eight hours operating in a state of hyper-vigilant paranoia. I smiled at Evan over coffee. I kissed him goodbye at the elevator. I went to my final wedding dress fitting and pretended to cry tears of joy for the seamstress.
Beneath the facade, I was aggressively hunting the ghost of Larkspur Strategies.
I hired a private corporate investigator off the books, using my personal trust account to pay him in cash. I needed to know exactly who owned the shell company receiving the stolen funds.
“It’s buried deep, Ms. Quinn,” the investigator, a grizzled ex-cop named Barnes, told me over a burner phone. “Larkspur is registered in Delaware under a generic registered agent. But they slipped up on their banking details. The routing numbers for the deposits link back to an offshore trust.”
“Who is the primary beneficiary of the trust?” I demanded, pacing the length of a secluded park a mile from my office.
Barnes sighed. “The trust is named the LM Heritage Fund. The primary signatory is a woman named Lucinda Mercer.”
The phone nearly slipped out of my sweaty palm.
Lucinda Mercer. Evan’s mother.
A woman who had hugged me at my father’s funeral, kissed my cheek, and told me I would always have a family in her. Together, mother and son were systematically siphoning $2.3 million from the legacy my father built.
“Are you sure, Barnes?” I whispered, feeling nauseous.
May you like
“I’m positive. They’re smart, but they got greedy. What do you want to do? If you go to the board, your signature is on the approvals. They could claim you were the mastermind and the Mercers were just the bagmen.”
“Do nothing yet,” I instructed. “I need to look my fiancé in the eye and see exactly how far he’s willing to go.”
