Chapter 4 - The Boardroom and the Audit
The lobby of Apex Logistics smelled of freshly ground espresso and industrial-strength floor wax.
At 12:45 PM, I walked through the glass revolving doors, adjusting my tie. My silver sedan was parked in its usual slot in the subterranean garage. Upstairs, on the fourth floor, the executive boardroom hummed with the quiet tension of a company preparing for a hostile acquisition rumor.
When I pushed open the frosted glass door of Conference Room B, four pairs of eyes snapped toward me.
David Vance sat at the head of the mahogany table, looking harried, thumbing through a stack of compliance printouts. Next to him sat Sarah Jenkins, the head of HR—a sharp, no-nonsense woman with silver-streaked hair and a reputation for chewing up ethical violators and spitting them out into the corporate ether.
And sitting three seats down from them was Jonathan Miller.
Miller had changed his shirt, but his hair still carried a faint, stubborn greenish hue around the roots despite whatever frantic scrubbing he must have done in a downtown restroom. When he saw me walk in, his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. He hadn't expected me to show up today. In his mind, I was supposed to be the cuckolded husband sitting at home drowning his sorrows in cheap whiskey.
"Thomas," David said, frowning as he tossed a pen onto the table. "Glad you could finally make it. We have a situation."
"Is it about the Southeast routing models?" I asked calmly, taking a seat directly opposite Miller.
"No," Sarah Jenkins chimed in, her voice cold and clipped. "It’s about internal data security. And a severe conflict of interest involving an unvouched audit." She slid a printed report across the polished wood.
The top page bore my signature as reviewing analyst, but the underlying data wasn't about shipping logistics. It was an extraction of server logs detailing unauthorized access requests originating from a compliance terminal registered to J. Miller.
Miller bolted upright in his chair, his face turning a sickly, pale shade of gray that contrasted sharply with his greenish hair. "This is bullshit," he stammered, his voice cracking. "Thomas is manufacturing this. He has a personal bias—"
"What kind of bias, Jonathan?" I asked quietly, leaning forward, resting my elbows on the table.
Miller froze. He looked at me, searching my eyes for any sign of bluffing. He didn't find any. He knew—just as my wife knew—that I didn't bluff. I calculated.
"Explain yourself, Miller," David Vance demanded, his eyes narrowing as he looked between us. "What does Thomas have to do with your audit logs?"
"Nothing," Miller muttered, sweating profusely now under the harsh recessed LED lighting of the boardroom. "It’s... it’s a personal dispute. It has nothing to do with company data."
"A personal dispute?" Sarah Jenkins raised an eyebrow, picking up a second packet of printed documents—the ones containing the geotagged photos of Miller’s black BMW parked in my driveway during working hours, alongside time-stamped entries of his keycard usage at the office. "Mr. Miller, using corporate hours, company-subsidized fuel, and restricted database access to conduct personal affairs at an employee's primary residence is a direct violation of Section 8 of the Apex Employee Handbook. Not to mention potential misuse of proprietary auditing privileges."
The room went dead silent.
David Vance looked from the photos to Miller, then slowly turned his gaze toward me. His expression was a mix of shock and profound wariness. David was a practical man; he didn't care about office drama, but he cared deeply about federal compliance audits and lawsuits. An ethics violation involving a compliance officer misusing his position to romance an employee's spouse was a legal grenade waiting to go off.
"Thomas," David said slowly, his voice dropping an octave. "Did you know about this?"
"I found out this morning," I replied honestly. "When I came home early and found Mr. Miller in my backyard."
Miller flinched as if he had been physically struck. "You son of a bitch," he hissed, standing up so fast his chair scraped loudly against the parquet floor. "You set this up! You knew we'd be there!"
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"Sit down, Jonathan," Sarah Jenkins said, her voice dropping like a guillotine blade. "Or security will escort you out. And trust me, being walked out by security is a much cleaner exit than what’s going to happen to your professional credentials after we hand these files over to the state licensing board."
***
