Chapter 71 JASMINE AND THE FILE

Chapter 71 JASMINE AND THE FILE
CALLUM'S POV

The drive down to the office was a long one.

The moment I got to the office, I headed straight to Jasmine's quarters.

She was already at her desk with two opened files in front of her.

My eyes darted to the two files opened in front of her, a highlighter uncapped in her hand, and her eyes moving between both pages with focus.

There was no doubt she had been on this since she woke up. She looked up when I passed her cubicle and held up the highlighter.

"Give me five minutes to settle," I said, not breaking stride as I walked to my office.

By 10am she walked into my office.

I had my jacket half off when she came in, put the first file flat on my desk, and turned it so it faced me without waiting for me to sit down first.

"Page seven." She tapped the bottom third of the page with the cap of her highlighter. "Secondary signature. Witness block."

I sat down and pulled the file toward me, staring at the page she had pointed at.

Standard acquisition counter documentation. Primary signature from a firm I already recognized, already flagged, already known to be Castellano connected. I moved past it down to another.

The witness signature was below it.

I read the firm name printed beside it.

Then I read it again more slowly, trying to get how it connected to the report.

"Where does it connect?" I looked up at her.

Jasmine opened the second file on the desk beside the first one without being asked, already turned to the first marked page.

"Three other shell company documents." She pointed to a name highlighted in yellow. "They are the same person with different roles each time."

I looked at the marked entry. Everything was making sense now.

"Sometimes primary, sometimes secondary." She moved to the next marked page and pointed again. "Always just far enough in the background that it reads like background noise."

I looked at the second entry. Same name but different entity just like she had mentioned.

She turned to the third marked page herself and waited while I found it.

"How long has this been happening?" I kept my eyes on the page.

"Six years on the earliest one I found Sir." She turned to the fourth page and stepped back slightly, giving me room to look without standing over me.

I sat back in my chair and looked at all four documents spread across my desk.

Four different entities. Four different years. The same name sitting quietly in the witness block every single time, small enough that it disappeared into the paperwork unless you were specifically looking for it.

Nobody had been specifically looking for it for years.

Until she was.

"When did you find the first connection?" I looked up at her.

"Around 11pm last night Sir." She capped her highlighter and held it loosely at her side.

I looked at her standing on the other side of my desk with both files open in front of her and the morning just barely started outside my office window.

"The handwriting didn't match the firm's usual notary." She said it the way she said everything, no preamble, no performance. I was beginning to notice little things about her that I can't seem to understand.

"I noticed it when I went back through the counter documents from the beginning. So I pulled the firm's registered notary records separately and ran the name on its own." She nodded at the second file. "The other three came up in the same search."

I looked at the four pages laid out in front of me.

She had gone back through the counter documents from the beginning at eleven at night because a signature's handwriting looked slightly wrong to her.

She had pulled registered notary records.

She had run a separate name search.

She had built this across four documents and laid it out across my desk in order before I arrived, each page already turned to the right entry, each connection already marked.

And she was standing there now waiting for me to catch up.

"Send all of this to Reeves this morning." I straightened the first file carefully. "Everything you pulled. The registry records, the comparisons, all four documents side by side. Use the direct line, not the company system."

"Already drafted." She picked both files up from my desk. "I was waiting for you to look at it first."

I was amused, already drafted.

When was I so easy to detect?

She turned toward the door, heading back to her office after I nodded at her.

She was a few inches away from opening the door when I called her name.

"Jasmine!” I called.

She stopped on her track and turned back, facing me.

“Do you need anything else Sir?” She asked, with a sign of concern in her voice.

I kept staring at her, my eyes darting from her lips back up to her eyes. How come I never noticed she was this beautiful and had these angelic eyes with.

I was so lost staring until she drawed my attention back to reality.

“Are you okay Mr Blackthorn?” She asked.

“Hmmm.” I cleared my throat, suiting my tie with one hand.

"Good work, thank you for all you do for this company." I said, trying so hard to sound formal.

Jasmine looked at me for one moment longer than the acknowledgment required.

“ I'm only doing my job sir. I'll send the files to Mr Reeves now.” She smiled and then turned her back on me heading for the door.

The moment she walked out I let out a shaky breath, one I never knew I was holding.

Then I looked at the four documents on my desk and the careful yellow marks she had put on every relevant line.