Chapter 14 - The Paper Trail
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Despite the glaring evidence of foul play, Adrian continued to behave as if the missing original document proved absolutely nothing. He maintained his infuriatingly arrogant posture, offering me an insulting divorce settlement that amounted to pennies compared to the actual value of my stolen historical equity. When I fiercely rejected it, Sloane brazenly began attending the legal strategy meetings regarding company assets.
This was a colossal corporate governance violation. She was simultaneously acting as a senior executive guiding company policy and operating as the CEO’s undisclosed mistress actively trying to diminish his wife's settlement. Yet, Adrian had spent years meticulously surrounding himself with spineless sycophants whose massive salaries depended entirely on his favor; no one dared to raise a red flag.
Then, the European conglomerate demanded their independent forensic audit.
Gabriel Voss and his formidable team did not answer to Adrian. They answered directly to the transaction committee. Their strict mandate was to verify the legitimacy of every single founder’s contribution, scrutinize every major equity transfer, validate all patent assignments, and investigate any suspicious payments made to entities connected to senior leadership.
Adrian, in his hubris, was entirely unaware that the company's very first bank records still existed.
During Helixora’s third year of operations, the company had switched banks, and the original account files were boxed up and shipped to a long-term deep storage facility. That specific branch later underwent a complex merger with another institution. But Gabriel’s relentless team managed to trace the old account via an archived routing number and successfully subpoenaed the complete original opening package.
Inside that dusty file lay the holy grail: the original wire transfer memorandum, the founders’ banking resolution, and a personal letter Adrian had drafted to the bank manager.
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The letter explicitly stated: "My wife and co-founder, Claire Whitmore, is providing the initial capital required to begin operations. Her investment represents forty percent of the founders’ ownership..."
He had personally signed his name in blue ink beneath those exact words. He had spent fourteen years trying to erase me, but he couldn't erase the desperate man he had been when he needed my money to survive.
