Chapter 5 - The Secret Audit
Vivian slammed the front door so hard the crystal chandelier in the foyer rattled. But her departure didn't bring peace; it brought a new kind of tension.
That evening, after Zoe was safely tucked into the handcrafted crib upstairs, Elijah sat at his heavy mahogany desk in the home office. Piles of freight manifests, tax returns, and corporate audits were spread out before him. Yet his mind wasn't on shipping routes. It was on the look in Imani’s eyes when Vivian had called her a vagrant.
There was a quiet knock on the office door.
“Come in,” Elijah said without looking up.
Imani pushed the door open slightly, holding a cup of steaming black coffee. She set it gently on the corner of the desk.
“You’re working late,” she said softly.
“Corporate expansion,” Elijah muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Vivian isn't wrong about one thing. Running a billion-dollar company makes you a target. People watch your every move.”
“And they watch your weaknesses,” Imani added, leaning against the bookshelf. She looked at him with an expression of quiet strength that caught him off guard. “Elijah, you don't have to keep me here to prove a point to Vivian. I can find a job in town. I can rent a small apartment in Coulter Ridge.”
“You think I’m doing this to spite Vivian?” Elijah looked up, his dark eyes locking onto hers.
“Aren't you?”
“No,” he said slowly, standing up from his desk and walking over to stand just a few feet away from her. “Imani... do you know why I was driving down that specific stretch of road at nine o'clock at night when every other sensible person was home?”
“Because you were late leaving Atlanta.”
“My meeting ended at six,” Elijah confessed, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I sat in my SUV in the parking garage for two and a half hours. Do you know why? Because I didn't want to come home to a completely silent house. For four years, every time I turned the key in the front door, I felt like I was walking into a tomb.”
He took a step closer.
“When I saw you standing in that storm, holding that baby... for the first time in four years, I didn't dread coming home. I wanted to.”
Imani’s breath caught. The space between them suddenly felt charged with an electricity neither of them had expected.
Before either could speak, the office phone on the desk—a direct, secure line that only three people in the company had access to—began to ring shrilly.
May you like
Elijah frowned, walking back to pick it up. “Brooks.”
A panicked voice spilled through the speaker. “Mr. Brooks? We have a massive problem. Someone just leaked internal financial documents to the federal transport commission. They’re claiming our Georgia hub has been forging safety logs for the past six months. Federal inspectors are already on their way to Cedar Hollow with a search warrant.”
