Chapter 1 - The Raccoon In The Empire
“On what?” Dante asked, his voice dropping into that dangerously low register that usually sent grown men scrambling for the nearest exit.
Christine met his gaze without blinking. “On whether your idea of resolving internal embezzlement involves a subpoena or a shallow ditch in the Nevada desert. I’m a certified public accountant with a spotless professional license, Mr. Moretti. I balance ledgers; I don’t accessory to murder.”
A suffocating silence hung between them in the private dining room. Outside the glass panels, the evening dinner rush had started. Crystal clinked against silverware, servers glided across polished hardwood, and city lights reflected off the high-end brass decor of Dante’s flagship restaurant. Inside, Dante’s dark eyes locked onto Christine’s face. He stepped closer, close enough that she caught the clean, masculine scent of cedarwood, rich espresso, and expensive bespoke wool.
“You watch too many movies, Ms. Cole,” Dante murmured, his tone dry yet carrying an electric undercurrent. “I run high-end hospitality, commercial real estate, and private equity. Dead bodies are bad for quarterly earnings. You bring me the name and the hard proof, and I deal with them legally and ruthlessly. My reputation exists so I don't have to get my hands dirty. Understand?”
“Understood,” Christine replied smoothly, tucking the black embossed card into her blazer pocket. “Give me three days of uninterrupted access to the raw server logs. No summaries, no pre-filtered spreadsheets from your vice president, and definitely no ‘friendly check-ins’ from your armed perimeter security. They make my junior associate hyperventilate.”
Dante’s lips curved into that subtle, devastating half-smile. “Deal. But you don't stay in some cheap chain hotel near the freeway. You stay at The Grand Crest. My suite floor. If someone is siphoning nearly three-quarters of a million dollars out of my accounts, they’re watching my numbers. Which means they will soon be watching you.”
Christine felt a cold spike of adrenaline strike the back of her neck, though she kept her expression composed. “Are you worried about my safety, or worried about your missing money?”
“Right now? The money,” Dante said smoothly, holding open the heavy oak door for her. “Don't make me add your funeral expenses to the company balance sheet. It looks messy on an income statement.”
She gave him a sharp, evaluating glance before stepping out into the hallway, where Aaron was pacing so frantically he had worn a visible path into the vintage Turkish rug. When Aaron saw her emerge alive and fully intact, his jaw dropped in sheer disbelief.
“You’re alive,” Aaron hissed under his breath, practically jogging to keep up with her brisk pace toward the elevators. “Christine, do you have any idea who that was? I spent the whole meeting texting my sister where my will is kept! You called his multi-million-dollar syndicate a raccoon! A literal trash animal!”
“And now we have direct administrative access to their root databases, a penthouse suite at The Grand Crest, and a client who actually understands why vendor reconciliation matters,” Christine said calmly, pressing the elevator call button. “Pack your laptop, Aaron. We have six hundred and eighty thousand reasons to skip sleep tonight.”
An hour later, Christine sat in the expansive executive suite at The Grand Crest. The room overlooked the sparkling downtown skyline, complete with floor-to-ceiling glass and plush velvet furniture. Her laptop was booted, running custom extraction scripts against the vendor files Dante’s head of IT had reluctantly coughed up. Beside her sat a carton of Chinese takeout and a lukewarm cup of black coffee.
As the lines of raw financial data streamed down her screen, Christine began cross-referencing shell company tax identification numbers against regional incorporation filings. The pattern she had spotted earlier wasn't random sloppy bookkeeping. It was surgical. Every payment was kept beneath nine thousand five hundred dollars to avoid triggering internal dual-authorization flags.
Then, her screen flashed a red exception error.
A payment processed twenty minutes ago. Ten thousand dollars coded as “HVAC emergency repairs,” routed to an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. The IP address originating the authorization wasn't from Dante’s corporate headquarters.
May you like
It was logged directly from the penthouse router right above her room.
Before Christine could trace the mac address, the lights in her suite violently flickered and died, plunging the entire floor into pitch-black darkness.
