Chapter 7
Within twenty minutes, the black sedan was speeding back downtown toward the soaring glass tower of Northstar Solutions, carrying the father and his young daughter.
Emma pressed her nose against the glass, watching the festive holiday lights flicker across the bustling city shops with wide, fascinated brown eyes.
"Are we going to your giant castle?" Emma asked Victoria, pointing up toward the silver high-rise piercing through the gray winter clouds above them.
"Something like that," Victoria replied softly, looking between the modest father and his precious child with a quiet reverence she rarely ever felt.
They entered the corporate lobby through the private executive garage, bypassing the waiting reporters who had begun gathering outside the main revolving doors.
Upstairs on the top floor, the executive suite was alive with focused tension as legal experts and financial analysts pored over stacks of records.
Special agents from the state financial crimes division were cataloging hard drives, while Mark Reynolds sat handcuffed in a glass conference room down the hall.
When Mark looked up through the glass partition and saw Daniel holding Emma's hand, he buried his face in his cuffed hands with shame.
Daniel felt no triumph seeing his former manager brought low; he felt only profound sorrow for the pointless cruelty that had nearly ruined his family.
Victoria guided Daniel and Emma into her private corner office, an expansive room of polished mahogany, panoramic windows, and plush leather furnishings.
Her executive assistant brought in a tray loaded with hot cocoa, fresh cinnamon pastries, and a large sketch pad with professional colored drawing pencils.
Emma’s eyes went wide as saucers at the sight of the art supplies, looking up at Daniel for permission before touching a single item.
"Go ahead, sweetheart," Daniel said with a gentle nod, feeling a lump rise in his throat at the quiet generosity shown to his daughter.
Emma sat happily at the glass coffee table, humming a quiet Christmas carol as she immediately began sketching an intricate scene of snowy houses.
Victoria motioned Daniel toward the conference table, where a team of forensic accountants had laid out the complete paper trail of the Benton contract.
Chapter 5
"Look at this, Daniel," Victoria said, pointing to a ledger detailing hundreds of thousands of dollars rerouted into offshore corporate shell accounts.
"Mark was altering your technical projections to conceal deliberate budget shortfalls orchestrated by Andrew Cole over the last sixteen consecutive months," an investigator explained.