Chapter 6 - My Name on the Account
Before Malcolm answered, I asked everyone except Leah and Ethan to leave.
Julian refused.
"I am still chief strategy officer."
I looked at Malcolm.
"For the next five minutes?"
Malcolm understood.
"Julian, wait outside."
His face darkened.
"You cannot be serious."
"I am."
He pointed at me.
"She's turning you against your own executives."
Malcolm's expression hardened.
"You approved fourteen million dollars to companies we cannot verify. I do not need Nora's help becoming concerned."
Julian left.
The door slammed.
Malcolm sat.
"Halcyon Seventeen was a project code."
"For what?"
"Aurelia's first major federal logistics platform. Seventeen years ago."
Ethan frowned.
"Before Julian worked here."
"Before Camilla too."
Malcolm nodded.
"Her father, Charles Price, was our outside government-relations consultant."
That name again.
Price.
"What happened?"
Malcolm stared at his hands.
"Charles arranged payments through vendors to secure contract access."
"Bribes?"
"I never saw proof of direct bribes."
Leah gave him a flat look.
"That is lawyer language for yes."
Malcolm did not argue.
"The board discovered irregularities. We terminated Charles. He threatened to expose everyone."
"Everyone?"
"He claimed senior people knew."
"Did you?"
Malcolm looked at me.
"I knew enough to stop asking questions."
There it was.
Cowardice in a better suit.
"And my mother?"
His face changed.
"Margaret owned six percent of Aurelia then."
I stared.
My mother had never told me she had owned Aurelia stock.
"She demanded an independent review."
"What happened?"
"The company bought her out."
"Why?"
"Because she refused to sign the confidentiality language we wanted."
I almost smiled.
That sounded exactly like my mother.
Malcolm reached into his briefcase.
"She left something with me."
A sealed envelope.
My name on the front.
NORA.
My throat tightened.
"How long have you had that?"
"Twelve years."
"My mother died three years ago."
"She told me to give it to you only if Aurelia ever needed outside control again."
Anger rose fast.
"You don't get to turn my dead mother into a corporate scavenger hunt."
"I know."
"Do you?"
He pushed the envelope toward me.
"Read it before you decide what to do with me."
I opened it.
My mother's handwriting nearly broke me.
Nora,
If Malcolm gives you this, Aurelia has probably repeated a mistake it swore it would never repeat.
Companies do that.
People do too.
Do not rescue the brand. Rescue what is worth saving inside it.
The engineers.
The customers.
The ordinary people who do not get golden parachutes when executives become cowards.
Then came the line that made me sit down.
If the Price family is involved again, look for the ledger marked H17 in my Boston archive.
I stopped.
My mother's archive had been boxed after her death.
Grant had moved most of it into Northstar's secure storage.
I called him immediately.
"Find H17."
He did not ask why.
Twenty-three minutes later, he called back.
"I found a ledger."
"Scan it."
"Already did."
The file arrived.
Old payments.
Consulting fees.
Board notes.
Then a handwritten page in my mother's script.
Charles Price threatened to destroy Aurelia if we pushed further.
Malcolm agreed to a private settlement.
One condition: Charles would never return through family, affiliate, or controlled entity.
I looked at Malcolm.
"Camilla was prohibited from doing business with Aurelia?"
"Not exactly. She was sixteen then."
"But any company controlled by Charles was barred."
"Yes."
Ethan scrolled further.
Then he stopped.
"Nora."
"What?"
He turned the screen.
Meridian Strategic Services had been seeded with capital from a trust.
Trustee: Charles Price.
Camilla had not simply hired her brother.
She had brought the exact banned financial network back into Aurelia.
May you like
And Julian had signed every payment that let it in.
