Chapter 10: Jay’s Hidden Hand

The problem with building a case against Victor Stern was that the evidence kept disappearing.

Every time Elena got close to something—a suspicious transaction, a falsified report, a memo that contradicted public statements—the files would vanish. Not deleted, exactly, but moved, buried, hidden in layers of corporate bureaucracy that made them nearly impossible to find.

“Someone’s cleaning house,” Elena said on a Tuesday morning, frustration bleeding into her voice. “Every time I request a document, it takes three days to arrive. And when it does, half the pages are missing.”

Jay nodded. He knew exactly what was happening. Stern had people in IT, in records management, in the legal department. People whose loyalty had been purchased over eighteen years of favors and threats.

What Stern didn’t know was that Julian Vane had people too.

Not many. Julian had never been good at building the kind of network his father had mastered. But there was one person he trusted completely: Marcus Chen, the head of IT security, who had been with VaneTech for twenty-two years and had watched George Vane destroy his own son with casual cruelty.

Marcus owed Julian nothing. But he believed in truth.

That night, after Elena had gone home, Julian took the service elevator to the forty-seventh floor. He used his CEO credentials to access the building’s secure server room, where Marcus was waiting.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” Marcus said. He was a small man, bald, with glasses so thick they magnified his eyes into something almost alien. “If Stern finds out you’re digging through his files—”

“He won’t.”

“He has people everywhere.”

“So do I.” Julian sat at the terminal. “I need everything from the Sales division. Backups, metadata, deleted files. Everything from the last three years.”

Marcus hesitated. “You know I could lose my job for this.”

“You could lose your job if Stern stays. We both could. The difference is, I’m trying to save the company. He’s trying to save himself.”

Marcus stared at him for a long moment. Then he typed a command, and the screen filled with folders.

“Three hours,” he said. “That’s all I can give you before the system flags the access.”

“Three hours is enough.”

Julian worked quickly. He downloaded everything—emails, spreadsheets, internal chat logs, deleted files that had been preserved in the server’s backup system. He cross-referenced names, dates, transaction amounts. He built a web of connections that grew more damning by the minute.

By the end of the third hour, he had found something.

A series of encrypted emails between Stern and a vendor called Nexus Partners. The emails were heavily redacted, but the metadata showed a pattern: every time Stern approved a large rebate or contract exception, an email was sent to Nexus within twenty-four hours.

And Nexus Partners, Julian discovered, was owned by Stern’s brother-in-law.

He saved everything to his encrypted drive. Then he deleted the access logs, thanked Marcus, and returned to the thirty-second floor.

The next morning, he “found” a folder of documents on a shared drive that Elena had supposedly overlooked.

“I don’t understand,” Elena said, flipping through the papers. “I checked this drive yesterday. These files weren’t there.”

“Maybe someone moved them,” Jay said. “Maybe they wanted you to find them.”

“Who?”

He shrugged. “Does it matter? The information is good. Look at the Nexus connection. Stern’s brother-in-law. That’s not a coincidence.”

Elena read the documents again. Her eyes widened.

“This is it,” she said. “This is the smoking gun.”

“Not yet. It’s a pattern. We need a specific transaction—one where the kickback is clearly documented.”

“Then we keep digging.”

Jay nodded. But as Elena turned back to her computer, he felt the weight of his deception pressing down on him.

He had given her the evidence she needed. But he had also lied about where it came from. And every lie, no matter how well-intentioned, was another brick in the wall between them.

Say the thing, Elena had told him.

But he couldn’t. Not yet.