Chapter 7 - The Boardroom Wolves
The executive boardroom on the fiftieth floor was a glass-walled cage suspended over Boston Harbor. Twelve men and women sat around a massive teak table, all dressed in bespoke suits that cost more than Sophia’s first car. When Dante walked in, followed closely by Sophia carrying his legal pad and a thick binder of financial cross-references, the murmurs around the table died instantly.
Dante took the head of the table. He didn't sit immediately. He rested his knuckles on the polished wood and looked around the room.
“Before we discuss the Q3 projections,” Dante began, his voice quiet but carrying effortlessly, “we need to address the restructuring of our internal audit division. As most of you know, Victor Hale and Mark Bell were relieved of their duties yesterday due to unauthorized financial maneuvers.”
A murmur rippled through the room. A gray-haired man halfway down the table—Arthur Vance, head of the logistics advisory board—cleared his throat.
“Dante, Victor was with us for over a decade,” Arthur said smoothly, though a bead of sweat glistened on his forehead. “Are we entirely certain an internal purge is necessary over a minor bookkeeping discrepancy?”
Sophia felt a chill run down her spine. Arthur Vance. The name echoed in her memory from the corporate registry search she had run the day before. Victor Hale’s shell company hadn't just been funded by random embezzlement; its secondary routing numbers traced back directly to accounts associated with Arthur Vance’s private holdings.
Dante didn't answer right away. He turned his head slowly, looking at Sophia.
“Sophia,” Dante said. “Tell Arthur what else you found in those accounts.”
All eyes in the boardroom snapped toward Sophia. Twelve pairs of expensive, judgmental eyes sizing up a plus-size woman in an emerald-green blazer.
Sophia’s heart hammered against her ribs, but her fingers gripped the edge of her binder. She opened it to a highlighted page, stood up smoothly, and looked Arthur Vance dead in the eye.
“Mr. Vance is correct that the bookkeeping discrepancy was clever,” Sophia said, her voice steady and clear. “Over the past eighteen months, four hundred and fifty thousand dollars was funneled out of port maintenance and into three separate shell companies in Dorchester and South Boston. However, the secondary signatures authorizing those transfers didn't just belong to Victor Hale.”
Arthur’s face turned the color of spoiled milk. “This is absurd—who authorized this employee to speak—?”
“They were countersigned,” Sophia continued, her voice cutting cleanly through his panic, “by an oversight committee member holding voting shares in both Moretti Holdings and Vance Shipping Partners. Specifically, Arthur Vance.”
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The silence in the boardroom became absolute. You could hear the distant hum of the ventilation system through the glass walls.
Dante slowly sat back down in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach, watching Arthur with the calm detachment of a wolf staring down a wounded rabbit.
