Chapter 7 - Shadows from the Past
The following Monday, my corporate office at Harrison Capital was quiet until Marcus Cole walked through my door unannounced. His expression was grim.
"We have a problem, Daniel," Marcus said, closing the frosted glass door behind him.
"Is it Maya?"
"Yes and no. It’s Raymond Vance and Vanguard Youth Services." Marcus dropped a thick manila folder onto my desk. "I dug deeper into that thirty-thousand-dollar embezzlement charge from eighteen months ago. It wasn't thirty thousand. It was over four million dollars skimmed from federal foster care grants over a five-year period."
I leaned forward. "And Maya?"
"Maya was working as an unpaid student clerk in Vanguard's administrative office," Marcus explained. "She was sixteen. She was organizing their digital archives and noticed discrepancies in the ledger numbers. She built a private spreadsheet documenting the ghost accounts where the money was being funneled. She was going to take it to the Department of Children and Family Services."
"Raymond Vance found out," I deduced, my fists clenching.
"He found out the day before she turned eighteen. He wiped the hard drive, staged a theft of petty cash from the safe, and blamed her. He used his connections with local law enforcement to scare her into silence. He told her if she ever spoke a word about the accounts, he’d ensure she was sent to a state penitentiary for grand larceny."
"Who was Vance funneling the money to?" I demanded.
Marcus met my eyes. "Sterling Holdings."
The air in my office turned to ice.
Richard Sterling. He was my chief rival in Chicago’s private equity sector—a ruthless, politically insulated billionaire who had spent the last five years trying to push Harrison Capital out of municipal development contracts. Sterling had funded Vanguard’s expansion through his charitable foundation, using it as a tax-sheltered vehicle to harvest federal kickbacks.
"Sterling knows she’s with you," Marcus added quietly.
"How?"
"Vanguard still has an active alert in the municipal registry for Maya’s social security number. When you set up her private apartment lease and linked your corporate guarantor account, the alert pinged. Yesterday, two private investigators hired by Sterling’s legal firm were spotted taking photographs outside her apartment building in Pilsen."
A cold, venomous fury ignited in my gut. They had stolen this girl's childhood, cast her out onto the freezing streets, and now that she had found a sliver of safety, they were circling like vultures to ensure their secrets remained buried.
"Bring her here," I ordered Marcus, my voice dropping to a dangerous register. "Now. Pack everything in her apartment. She doesn't go back there."
"Daniel, if Sterling finds out Maya has copies of those old ledgers, he won't just try to frame her. He'll eliminate her."
"Let him try," I said, standing up and adjusting my cuffs. "He's about to find out what happens when you threaten my family."
I paused. The word had slipped out naturally. *Family.*
May you like
For two years, my family had been a shattered fragment: me and my broken daughter. But in three short weeks, Maya Vance had become the spine that held our crumbling world upright. And I would tear Chicago apart stone by stone before I let Richard Sterling touch a hair on her head.
***
