Chapter 85 Clean Books

Chapter 85 Clean Books
lElena's Pov

The new offices were on the third floor of a building in the business district. 
Not the main location where Luca had been running the organization. A separate address, acquired specifically for the legitimate operations, with a reception desk and a meeting room and the kind of modest corporate presentation that said nothing unusual about the people who worked there.

My desk was in the corner office that caught the morning light. A good chair, a large monitor. Filing cabinets that were already organized, which told me someone had prepared for my arrival carefully.

Luca had arranged the position through a formal contract. Independent consultant.  It was the kind of arrangement that would hold up to examination, which was the point.

He walked me through the office on the first morning himself.

"The filing system," he said, opening the first cabinet. "Sienna organized it. She will be the first to tell you if something is not where you expect it to be."

"I will ask Sienna directly," I said. "She is more reliable than most filing systems."

"That is true," he said. He showed me the second cabinet. "These are the supply chain contracts for the eastern territory.  The external firm had a look at the first quarter and signed off."

"What firm did you use," I said.

He named them. I recognized the name. Competent, mid-sized, not known for asking difficult questions, which was a limitation I would have to account for in how I reviewed their work.

"And the logistics company," I said.

"Third cabinet," he said. "Preti's operation. He sends monthly summaries but the underlying records are here."

"Has anyone done a full audit since the attack," I said.

"No," he said. "That was one of the reasons I wanted you here."

"I will start there," I said. "If someone has been interfering with the premises, the financial records are the next logical target."

He held my gaze. "You think there is financial interference as well," he said.

"I think it is worth checking," I said. "The physical message on the wall was visible. Financial irregularities are less visible and therefore more useful over time."

"How long will a full audit take," he said.

"Depends on what I find," I said. "A clean audit takes three days. A complicated one takes as long as it takes."

He nodded. "I will leave you to it," he said.

He went. I made coffee in the small kitchen off the main office and sat at my desk and opened the first file.

The first day was orientation. I read through the external firm's quarterly report, which was competent and not penetrating. 

They had confirmed the numbers matched the submitted records. They had not asked whether the submitted records reflected reality, that was the gap I was there to close.

The second morning I started on the logistics company files.

Preti's operation had clean surface numbers. Revenue was consistent with the volume of contracts. Expenses were documented with receipts, the payroll was straightforward. On a quick pass it looked exactly like a well-run legitimate business.

I was not doing a quick pass.

I started with the supplier payments. Twelve regular suppliers. Each one had a contracted rate and a payment history. I cross-referenced the contracted rates against the actual payment amounts for each supplier over the past six months.

Eleven of the twelve were consistent. The twelfth had a pattern I had to look at twice.

Every third month, the payment to this supplier was 3.2 percent higher than the contracted rate.  Over six months it added up to a number that was still not alarming in isolation. But the regularity of it was not accidental. Every third month was a pattern, patterns were not accidents.

I pulled the supplier contract. The rate was clearly documented. There was no clause for periodic adjustments, there was no correspondence in the file indicating a renegotiation.

I pulled the payment authorizations. Each of the inflated payments had been authorized by the same person. An accounts administrator named Gallo who had been with Preti's operation for fourteen months.

I sat at my desk and held this information for a moment.

Three possibilities. Gallo was making an honest administrative error on a regular basis, which was unlikely given the regularity. 

Gallo had renegotiated informally with the supplier and failed to document it, which was possible but sloppy.  Gallo was skimming, using the supplier overpayment as a mechanism to extract money from the business on a cycle designed not to attract immediate attention.

The third possibility was the most likely and the most concerning.

The next two days had a rhythm I recognized from the best periods of my career. The kind of focused, methodical work that produced clean results when you followed it correctly. 

Morning coffee at the desk. The files in the order I had organized them. A running document of findings that was growing one confirmed entry at a time.

Sienna had arranged access to the supplier's account records by the end of the first full day. I spent the second morning tracing the overpayment funds. They arrived in the supplier account as expected. 

Then, within three business days of each arrival, a portion of the same amount moved out through a secondary payee that was listed in the supplier's records as a subcontractor.

The subcontractor did not appear to exist. I ran the registration number through two separate databases. Nothing confirmed.

I added this to the summary document and sent it to Sienna with a note.

She called within twenty minutes.

"The subcontractor is a shell," she said. "Confirmed. I had Gio run the registration independently and it comes back empty."

"So the overpayment route is supplier to shell company," I said. "The shell company is the extraction point."

"Yes," she said. "Three layers. Gallo in the operation, the supplier as a passive conduit, the shell as the destination. This was set up before Gallo was placed. The infrastructure was ready."

"Who has access to the shell company," I said.

"That is what Carlo is working on," she said. "He thinks it traces back to the controller's network. He wants another twenty-four hours."

"Tell him to take the time he needs," I said. "I will keep building the financial documentation here so that whatever he finds has a complete evidentiary record attached to it."

"Yes," she said. "That is exactly what we need."

I worked through lunch. By the late afternoon I had a complete six-month financial picture of the irregularity with every transaction documented, every authorization traced, and a clear narrative of the method that would be comprehensible to anyone who needed to act on it.

Hartwell called at four. I had told him I was taking a temporary consulting engagement. 

He was gracious about the timing and asked me to let him know when I was available to return to the manufacturing client file, which had not resolved itself in my absence.

"The creative accounting client," I said.

"They are thinking about it," he said. "As predicted."

"I will be back within three weeks," I said. "I will deal with them then."

"I will let them keep thinking," he said.

By the time I finished documenting the final entries it was nearly eight in the evening and the building was quiet around me. I stretched my back and made a final cup of coffee and sat at my desk looking at six months of financial evidence laid out in clean order.

The irregularity had been running for five months. Small enough to avoid routine detection. Consistent enough to suggest someone who knew they had time. Linked to a shell company that pointed toward the controller's network.

Someone had been skimming Luca's legitimate business from the moment it became operational.

That was the thing I was sitting with. Not the method. The timing. The operation had started within two months of the legitimate business launching. 

Whoever designed it had not waited to see whether the business would survive. They had moved in immediately.

Because they had expected it to succeed. Because they had planned for the direction to work and had decided to parasitize it from the beginning.

That was a different kind of threat than a physical attack or a surveillance operation.

That was someone who believed in the direction enough to build a long-term extraction from it.

I was still sitting with this when the light under the main office door changed. Footsteps in the corridor. Luca, i recognized his walk.

He opened the door and looked at the files spread across my desk and at the expression on my face.

"You found something more," he said.

"Come and look at this," I said.