Chapter 3 - The Server
Adrian ordered the event manager to remove Grace.
Claire stopped him.
“She stays.”
The guests nearby turned toward them.
Adrian’s face tightened.
“You are letting temporary staff disrupt a two-billion-dollar investment gala.”
Grace looked down at her uniform.
Six months earlier, she had not been temporary staff.
She had been a compliance analyst at Whitmore Capital.
Claire stared at her.
“I don’t remember you.”
Grace’s humiliation was quiet.
“I emailed your office eleven times.”
Adrian answered for Claire.
“She was dismissed for mishandling internal records.”
Grace shook her head.
“I found pension money being used to pay the insurance premiums.”
Claire looked toward Samuel.
“Is that possible?”
He turned to the payment schedule.
The annual premium was six million dollars.
The account funding it belonged to the Whitmore Employee Retirement Reserve.
Money contributed by assistants, receptionists, drivers and maintenance workers.
Adrian called it temporary liquidity.
Grace called it what it was.
“You used workers’ retirement money to insure the woman who owned the company.”
Claire felt every nearby employee listening.
She remembered approving a reserve restructuring three months earlier.
Adrian had placed the signature page in front of her between investor meetings.
She signed without reading the full attachment.
Grace looked at her.
“You didn’t know.”
Claire’s shame deepened.
“No.”
Grace’s voice remained steady.
“But you had the power to ask.”
May you like
Then Samuel found a second document inside the envelope.
If Claire became medically unavailable during the gala, Adrian would receive her voting proxy before midnight.
