Chapter 1 - The Midnight AuditKatherine did not cry when she walked into their immaculate suburban home. The silence of the empty house, which usually felt lonely on the nights Reginald claimed to be working late, now felt like a tactical advantage.
She walked straight past the kitchen, ignoring the chilled bottle of Veuve Clicquot she had bought for their tenth anniversary, and entered Reginald’s home office. For a decade, she had respected his boundaries. “Client confidentiality, Kath. You understand,” he would say, locking his mahogany filing cabinets.
Tonight, boundaries did not exist.
She took the heavy brass letter opener from his desk and wedged it into the lock of the bottom drawer. It gave way with a sharp snap. Inside were stacks of ledger books and corporate filings for Whitfield Development.
Katherine booted up her encrypted bank laptop. She pulled up the Bracken Ridge Construction file—the one with the strange Delaware routing numbers she had flagged at 6:14 AM. Her eyes darted between her glowing screen and Reginald’s private ledgers.
The vendor registrations traced to two service agents in Delaware. She typed the tax identification numbers from Reginald’s printed files into her bank’s global compliance database.
Match.
A cold, terrifying clarity washed over her. Reginald wasn't just having an affair. The woman at the wine bar, with the striking red hair and the manicured hand resting on his wrist, was Chloe Vance—Whitfield Development’s Vice President of Acquisitions.
Reginald wasn't just cheating on his wife. He was using Bracken Ridge Construction as a shell company to siphon millions of dollars from municipal development grants, laundering the money through offshore accounts co-signed by Chloe.
He was funding his double life with federal money, and he was using First Meridian Bank—her bank—to do it.
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Her phone buzzed. A text from Reginald: “Just leaving the site now, sweetheart. I am so sorry about our anniversary dinner. I’ll make it up to you this weekend. I love you.”
Katherine stared at the screen. She didn't type back. Instead, she took out a pen and wrote a single word on a sticky note, placing it on her laptop screen: Audit.
