Ethan’s pov
Six people had access to that folder, and I trusted all six of them with my life.
Marcus Feld had been running security and internal systems for Vance Shipping since before I could legally sign a contract, and he had the particular stillness of a man who’d learned long ago that panicking in front of the boss never helped anyone.
He sat across from me at eleven at night with a laptop open and a printed access log between us, and he didn’t touch his coffee once.
“Walk me through it again,” I said.
“Slowly.”
“The trust amendment was uploaded to the secure drive on March fourteenth, last year.” He turned the laptop toward me.
“Six credentials touched that folder in the ninety days around the upload. Not counting your father, obviously.”
“Obviously.” My father hadn’t touched a keyboard in weeks.
“Who’s on it?”
“You.” He held up a finger.
“Gerald Whitfield. Victor Ashford. Daniel Brooks. Patricia Nunez… she was your father’s assistant before she retired. And an outside paralegal from Whitfield’s old firm, a Melissa Grant, who processed the formatting.”
I sat back.
Six names, and I could have written a character reference for every single one of them without blinking.
“I didn’t touch it,” I said.
“So that’s five.”
“I know you didn’t touch it.
I’m not accusing you of stealing from yourself.” Something flickered at the corner of Marcus’s mouth, “But I have to show you the full list.
That’s the job.”
“Fine. Walk me through access times.”
“Gerald logged in twice, both during business hours, both consistent with drafting work. Melissa Grant logged in once, forty minutes, formatting changes only, nothing structural.” He scrolled.
“Patricia logged in three times over two weeks. All short sessions. She was likely just filing correspondence, that was her job.”
“And Victor.”
“Victor logged in once. Eleven minutes, at six forty in the morning, three days before the final draft was locked.”
Six forty in the morning.
Before the office opened.
Before anyone else was in the building to see what he was doing.
“That’s not nothing,” I said.
“It’s not proof either.” Marcus held my gaze evenly.
“Board members have standing access to trust documentation. He didn’t need to hide it. He just needed a quiet hour.”
“And Daniel?”
The pause before he answered lasted maybe two seconds too long. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“Daniel logged in four times. More than anyone except you, if you’d been on here at all.” He turned the screen fully toward me now.
“Two of those sessions overlap with drafting windows. He had comment access, not edit access, but he was in there.”
“He’s my best friend. He reviews everything I touch. That’s not unusual.”
“I’m not telling you what’s unusual,” Marcus said.
“I’m telling you who was in the room. What you do with that is yours to decide.”
“Tell me about the paralegal,” I said.
“Melissa Grant. Who supervised her work?”
“Officially, Gerald. She was contracted through his old firm before he came in-house with us.” Marcus flipped back a page.
“She’s done formatting work for half the trust documents this company’s filed in the last five years. If she’s dirty, she’s been dirty for a long time and very good at hiding it.”
“So she’s the least likely.”
“Statistically, yes. But I don’t deal in statistics when it comes to forty million dollars and a controlling stake in a shipping empire. I deal in access.” He tapped the log.
“And access says all six of these people could have done it.”
“What about outside the six? Could someone have gotten in without leaving a trace?”
“Nothing’s un-traceable if you know where to look, but a clean break-in on a system this locked down would take real skill. Skill, or an insider handing over credentials.” He watched my face carefully when he said it, like he wanted to see whether the idea landed the way he meant it to.
“You think someone on this list gave their login to someone else.”
“I think it’s the simplest explanation for why a document nobody remembers seeing somehow has six sets of fingerprints on it and no single obvious culprit.” He shrugged.
“People don’t usually hand out their passwords to strangers. They hand them to people they trust.”
That landed harder than he probably intended.
“Don’t share this outside the two of us,” I said.
“Not with legal. Not with the board. Not with anyone.”
“Understood.” He closed the laptop.
“For what it’s worth, I hope it’s the paralegal. Easiest conversation of the six.”
He let himself out.
I sat alone with the printed log until the numbers blurred.
Every one of them had a reason to be in that folder that had nothing to do with betrayal.
I was still sitting there when the door opened without a knock, “You’re still here.” Daniel dropped into the chair across from my desk, tie already loosened, two coffees in hand.
He slid one toward me.
“Figured you would be.”
“Long day.”
“Long month.” He took a sip of his own coffee, studying me over the rim.
“You look like a man doing math he doesn’t like the answer to.”
“Just going over the leak.” I kept my voice level, watching him the way I hadn’t let myself watch him in fifteen years of friendship.
“Trying to figure out who had eyes on the trust amendment before it went final.”
“And?”
“And a short list. Nothing conclusive.” Find the original chapter at g.com.
“Who’s on it?” he asked, easy as anything, like he was asking about a lunch order.
I hesitated.
Fifteen years of instinct told me to just say it.
“The usual suspects,” I said instead.
“Legal, a few board members. Nothing worth naming yet.”
Something crossed his face, “You don’t trust me with it?” A small laugh, “Ethan. Come on.”
“It’s not about trust. It’s about keeping the circle small until I know something for certain.”
“Smart.” He nodded slowly, set the coffee down.
“Probably the right call, honestly. The fewer people who know you’re looking, the less chance whoever did this gets spooked and covers their tracks better.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“Still.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and for a second his voice dropped into something quieter, more serious than I’d heard from him in weeks.
“Let me run point on this. Officially. I’ve got relationships across the building nobody else does… people talk to me who wouldn’t talk to Marcus’s team, and definitely wouldn’t talk to you. I can ask questions that don’t sound like an interrogation.”
“I don’t know, Daniel.”
“You don’t have the bandwidth for it right now.
Your father, the marriage clause, Kestrel, Zara, you’re stretched thinner than I’ve ever seen you, and you know it.” He held my eyes, “Let me carry this one.
That’s what I’m here for.”
It would have been so easy to say yes.
Easier than easy, “I’ll think about it,” I said.
“That’s not a no.” He smiled, but his eyes stayed sharp, reading me the way he always had, “What did the log actually say? Six names, you said. Anyone stand out?”
“Nothing conclusive,” I said again, holding the same line.
“You keep saying that. ‘Nothing conclusive.'” He laughed, but it came out thinner than usual.
“You sound like a lawyer, Ethan. You’ve never sounded like a lawyer with me.”
“Maybe I’m learning to.”
“Fair enough.” He held up both hands, backing off.
“I’m not trying to pry. I just don’t like watching you carry this alone. Never have.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Don’t think too long.” He stood, straightened his jacket, that familiar half-grin sliding back into place like nothing had shifted at all.
“Whoever did this has a head start. Every day we wait is a day they get to bury it deeper.”
“I know.”
“Get some sleep, Ethan. You look like hell.”
Daniel closed my office door behind him and said, “Let me look into it,” and for one unguarded second, something in his voice didn’t sound like relief… it sounded like control.