Chapter 2 - The Audit Trail of Greed
At 5:00 AM, the cleaning crew arrived, vacuuming the grey industrial carpeting while I sat motionless in my ergonomic leather chair, my eyes locked on the dual screens. My chief financial officer, Marcus Vance, wouldn't be in the office until 8:30, but I didn't need to wait for him to initiate the corporate autopsy. I had master-key administrative access to every server, every payroll ledger, and every human resources database across our three-state footprint.
I opened the enterprise resource planning software, typing in my master biometric override code: WV-001-FOUNDER.
Instantly, the corporate architecture of Whitaker Construction materialized before me in a cascading series of neon-green dashboards, expense matrices, and performance analytics. I filtered the employee database by last name: Collins, Miller, Vance, Henderson, Sterling... forty-seven distinct profiles appeared in a neat, orderly column.
I clicked on Martin Collins’s file.
Position: Senior Compliance Director. Base Salary: $145,000. Bonus Structure: Tier-1 Executive Incentive (15%). Total Annual Compensation: $166,750. Performance Metrics Review: Over the past three years, Martin had submitted exactly forty-two expense reports, thirty-eight of which were flagged by our automated audit software for luxury dinners at country clubs, personal golf club memberships, and fuel purchases for vehicles not registered to the company fleet. My previous operations managers had tried to flag these discrepancies, but Claire had personally intercepted the internal audits, calling me in a panic every single time to ensure the flags were manually overridden "to keep family harmony."
I pulled up Derek Collins’s file. Director of Regional Logistics. Salary: $125,000. Actual hours logged in our warehouse management system over the last twelve months: zero. Derek spent his working hours trading cryptocurrency from his company-provided MacBook while sitting in the parking lot of a local Starbucks.
Lucas Collins. Property Maintenance Supervisor. Salary: $115,000. Lucas hadn't inspected a single commercial roof or plumbing fixture since his hire date in 2022. Instead, he had used our corporate purchasing accounts to buy industrial-grade landscaping equipment for his side business, billing the invoices directly to our corporate overhead account under the code Emergency Site Repairs.
As I scrolled through the payroll bleed, a cold fury settled deep into my chest. These people hadn't just been riding my coattails; they had been actively looting the enterprise that I had bled for, laughing at me behind my back while cashing checks funded by my sweat. They viewed my assumed poverty as a moral failing, a sign of intellectual inferiority, while they lived in suburban mansions, drove imported European sedans, and took annual Caribbean vacations—all paid for by the "broke handyman" they despised.
At 8:00 AM, the frosted glass door of my office swung open. Marcus Vance strode in, clutching a stack of physical tax documents and a steaming cup of black coffee. Marcus was fifty-two, sharp-eyed, and possessed a mind like a steel trap. He was one of the very few people outside of my legal counsel who knew the full scope of my personal wealth and my marital dynamic.
Marcus stopped dead in his tracks, taking in the empty coffee cups scattered across my desk, the dark circles under my eyes, and the single pink beanie resting beside my keyboard.
“Daniel,” Marcus said, his voice dropping into a grave, professional register. “I heard about Sophie. One of our regional managers’ daughters goes to her high school; word travels fast when a teenager is locked out in a blizzard on Christmas Eve. Are you alright?”
“My daughter is shaken up, but she’s safe, Marcus,” I said, my voice eerily calm. I slid the divorce papers across the desk toward him. “Claire served me last night. In front of her entire family. While they were laughing at my truck and locking my kid out in the snow.”
Marcus picked up the document, his eyes scanning the signatures. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “She’s out of her mind. Does she realize what she’s throwing away? Does her family have any idea who you actually are?”
“No,” I replied, leaning back in my chair and interlocking my fingers behind my head. “And that is about to change in the most violent way possible.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow, a faint, appreciative smirk touching the corner of his mouth. “I’m listening.”
“I want a comprehensive forensic audit of every single disbursement made to the forty-seven Collins-affiliated employees over the last five years,” I instructed, ticking the points off on my fingers. “I want every fraudulent expense report flagged, every unworked hour documented, and every breach of corporate compliance cataloged into a formal legal brief.”
“And the employment status?” Marcus asked, his eyes gleaming with corporate killer instinct.
“Termination for cause,” I said flatly. “Gross misconduct, corporate fraud, and embezzlement of company funds. I want all forty-seven of them terminated simultaneously. Effective immediately. No severance, no two-week notice, no polite transition period. I want their company-issued laptops remotely wiped, their corporate credit cards frozen, and their office keys deactivated before they even pour their morning coffee.”
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Marcus whistled softly, setting his coffee cup down. “That’s going to trigger a localized economic earthquake in the suburban country club set. Martin’s mortgage alone is four thousand a month. Derek just leased a new BMW M3 using our corporate backing as a guarantor.”
“Then they’d better dust off their resumes and brush up on their interviewing skills,” I said coldly. “The handyman is closing the toolbox.”
