Chapter 9: Eight O'Clock
Thomas Vey arrived at Patricia's office at 7:58.
He was carrying a laptop bag and a sealed envelope, and he looked like a man who had not slept properly in several months.
He sat across from Patricia's desk.
Renee sat to his left.
Destiny sat beside her mother.
Patricia poured four cups of coffee and sat down.
"You have two minutes to tell me why I should trust anything you say," Patricia told him.
"Start."
Thomas set the envelope on the desk.
"Because I'm the one who buried the original complaint."
No one moved.
"Marcus Carr filed an internal report eighteen months before he died," Thomas said.
"He had documented evidence that Gerald Harwell was running a secondary account structure — routing client funds through shell entities, skimming returns, falsifying quarterly statements.
The kind of fraud that takes years to build and years to unravel." He looked at the envelope.
"I received the report.
I told Marcus I would escalate it.
I didn't.
Gerald found out Marcus had filed it, and he came to me privately and made very clear what would happen to my career — and to my family — if I let it go any further."
"So you buried it," Patricia said.
"I buried it." He didn't look away.
"And six months later Marcus was de@d."
Renee's hand found Destiny's under the table.
"I don't believe Gerald kjlled him," Thomas said carefully.
"I have no evidence of that.
What I believe is that the stress of what Marcus knew, and the isolation of having no one act on what he reported, and the fear of what might happen to his family — I believe that kjlled him.
And I have lived with that for three years."
"That's not enough," Renee said.
Her voice was quiet and completely flat.
"Living with it is not enough."
"I know." He opened the laptop bag.
"Which is why I've spent the last eighteen months rebuilding everything Marcus documented, plus two additional years of transactions that have happened since.
Gerald got more aggressive after Marcus died.
He thought the risk was gone." Thomas turned the laptop to face Patricia.
"It wasn't."
Patricia leaned forward and looked at the screen for a long moment.
Then she looked up at Thomas.
"This is everything?"
"Everything I have access to.
There are files I can't reach — the ones Marcus encrypted.
If we can access those, we have a complete picture.
Without them, we have enough for an investigation but possibly not enough for charges."
Everyone looked at Destiny.
She had been quiet through all of it.
Now she straightened in her chair.
"What was my father like at work?" she said.
Thomas blinked.
"Careful.
Methodical.
He remembered everything."
"Did he ever talk about me?"
"Every day.
He had a photo on his desk.
You were maybe twelve in it.
He said you were the best reader he'd ever met." Thomas paused.
"He said you could finish his sentences before he did."
Destiny was quiet for a moment.
Then she said: "His birthday.
Mine.
Together."
She reached over to the laptop and typed eight characters into the search field on the encrypted file interface Patricia had pulled up.
The files opened.
Patricia made a sound that was not quite a word.
Thomas sat back in his chair and pressed both hands flat against his knees.
May you like
Renee looked at her daughter and said nothing at all.
She didn't need to.
