Chapter 4: What Patricia Found
Patricia Osei arrived at Ethan's office at eleven-forty that night carrying a laptop and a cardboard coffee cup she hadn't touched.
She set the laptop on the conference table, turned it toward him, and sat down.
"I pulled everything," she said.
"What I found is not simple."
Ethan looked at the screen.
Column after column of access logs — timestamps, file names, credential IDs, IP addresses.
"Walk me through it."
"The first unauthorized access was nine weeks ago — not eight.
Someone corrected the internal timestamp at the six-week mark.
That's why your security team flagged it late.
The original entry was altered."
"Who altered it?"
She pointed to a credential ID on the screen.
"This account belongs to Marcus.
But the alteration was made from an IP address registered to a consulting firm called Vela Advisory Group."
"I've never heard of them."
"They incorporated fourteen months ago.
Single registered director." She clicked to the next screen.
"James Whitfield."
Ethan leaned back in his chair.
"He's been planning this for over a year."
"At least.
But it gets worse." Patricia pulled up a third screen — a series of email headers, flagged by the monitoring system but never escalated because they had been routed through a secondary internal address that no longer had an active owner.
"These communications went through a dormant employee account.
Someone who left Carter House two years ago."
"Who?"
She looked at him steadily.
"Daniel Reed's former assistant.
She worked here for eight months before Daniel hired her away from us."
Ethan was quiet for a moment.
"So Daniel Reed placed someone inside Carter House," he said.
"She left two years ago but kept her internal routing address active.
And they've been using it as a blind channel ever since."
"Yes."
"And Marcus knew."
"Marcus didn't just know." Patricia turned the laptop back toward herself and pulled up one final file.
"Marcus was receiving payments.
Not through his salary.
Through a consultancy retainer — paid by Vela Advisory Group — deposited into an account his wife holds under her maiden name.
Fourteen months of payments.
Forty-two hundred dollars a month."
The number was almost modest.
That was the part that made it worse.
"He didn't do it for the money," Ethan said.
"No.
I think he did it because Whitfield promised him equity.
When the takeover completed, Marcus would have received a three-percent stake in whatever entity absorbed Carter House."
Ethan stood up and walked to the window.
Twelve floors below, the city moved without urgency.
"Does he know we have this?" he asked.
"Not yet.
Raymond locked the servers before he could pull anything further.
As far as Marcus knows, it was a routine security sweep."
"Good." Ethan turned from the window.
"I want him in my office at eight tomorrow morning.
Don't tell him why.
Tell him it's a quarterly performance review."
Patricia picked up her coffee cup, then set it back down.
"Ethan.
Before you do that — there's one thing I still can't explain."
"What?"
"The Carter Family trust documents.
The ones Whitfield's credentials tried to access tonight." She folded her hands on the table.
"Those files are not stored on the main server.
They're on an isolated partition that only three people know exists."
Ethan looked at her.
"You," she said.
"Me.
And your father's estate attorney."
The room was very quiet.
"Then someone told Whitfield where to look," Ethan said.
May you like
Patricia said nothing.
She didn't need to.
