Chapter 2 - The Audit of the Private RoomThe private dining room of L'Étoile de Manhattan felt suddenly small, suffocating, and charged with electric tension.
Khalid Al-Rashid remained standing beside his chair, his imposing frame draped in a tailored charcoal suit that commanded absolute authority. His dark, sharp eyes drilled into Richard Cole, then shifted back to me with a mixture of intense curiosity and cold realization.
“You were saying, Mr. Cole?” Khalid said softly, his voice dropping an octave as he switched back to crisp, accented English. “Your attorney mentioned that Schedule C was a standard administrative formality. Yet my colleague here, in fluent Arabic, just detailed how those three failing resort properties in upstate New York were quietly swapped into my acquisition portfolio at midnight.”
Richard’s face flushed a deep, mottled red. He shot a murderous glare in my direction, his hands trembling slightly as he gripped the edge of the mahogany table.
“Don’t listen to her, Your Excellency!” Richard stammered, forcing a desperate, strained laugh. “She’s a disgruntled former intern who couldn't hack corporate finance, so she took a low-level service job here to harass my family! Her name is Maya Santos. She’s unstable!”
“Unstable?” I asked calmly, resting my hands on the table. I didn't flinch. I didn't cower. I looked straight into Richard’s panicked eyes. “Richard, you might want to check which briefcase you brought to this lunch.”
Vincent Hale, the corporate attorney, went completely pale. His hand shot down to touch the leather briefcase resting beside his chair.
“What are you talking about?” Vincent snapped, his voice cracking.
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“I’m talking about the fact that while you were arguing by the service station at 11:15 AM, you accidentally left your draft notes and redlined contract revisions inside the bottom compartment of the service trolley,” I answered smoothly. “Which I promptly scanned and uploaded to my cloud archive.”
Silence descended on the room like an iron curtain.
