Chapter 7 - The Accountant Who Was Afraid
Emily met Anna at a twenty-four-hour diner outside Cambridge.
Marcus objected. Security objected. Emily went anyway, with Thomas seated two booths behind her and a recording device in her coat pocket.
Anna was twenty-six, pale, and shaking so badly she spilled coffee onto the table before taking a sip.
“I didn’t know who else to call,” she said.
Emily softened her voice. “Start wherever you can.”
Anna opened a folder under the table.
“I work under Gerald Price, Whitmore’s chief financial officer. Three months ago, he asked me to reconcile consulting payments to Halden Price. The numbers didn’t match services delivered. When I flagged it, he told me to stop asking questions.”
“Did Daniel know?”
Anna looked down.
Emily already had her answer.
Anna slid over an email printout.
Daniel had approved a payment coded as “strategic asset verification.” Attached beneath it was a memo discussing Emily’s “potential inherited instruments.”
Potential inherited instruments.
Not accountant’s daughter.
Not ordinary wife.
Daniel had known there was something.
Maybe not everything. But enough to ask.
Enough to investigate.
Enough to lie.
Emily felt something inside her become quiet.
Not numb.
Not broken.
Quiet.
A wound finally understanding its shape.
Anna continued. “There’s also a meeting note. Mrs. Whitmore said if you refused to cooperate, they needed grounds to challenge your stability.”
Emily’s eyes lifted. “My stability?”
Anna swallowed. “They wanted to make it look like you were emotionally unfit to manage assets.”
Marcus had warned her that powerful families rarely attacked directly when reputation could do the job more cleanly.
But hearing it was different.
Victoria had planned not only to discard her but to discredit her.
Daniel had sat in meetings where Emily was discussed like a problem to be neutralized.
Anna pushed one more document forward.
“This is the worst part.”
It was a draft psychiatric petition.
Unsigned.
Unfiled.
But prepared.
Emily read the first paragraph and felt the diner fade around her.
The petition alleged emotional instability, irrational financial behavior, and vindictive threats against a family company.
At the bottom was a blank line for Daniel’s signature.
Emily looked at Anna. “Did he sign one?”
“I don’t know,” Anna whispered. “But there’s a meeting tomorrow morning at Victoria’s house. They’re trying to decide whether to use it.”
Emily folded the document carefully.
“Why are you helping me?”
Anna’s eyes filled with tears.
“My father works in the leather division. Thirty years. If Whitmore collapses, he loses everything. But if they get away with this, everyone loses anyway.”
Emily reached across the table and covered Anna’s hand.
“You did the right thing.”
When Emily returned to Rowan Tower, Marcus was waiting.
She handed him the file.
“Prepare an injunction.”
“Against Whitmore?”
May you like
Emily looked toward the east, where the first faint edge of dawn had begun to show.
“Against all of them.”
