Chapter 3

That evening, Michael showed up at James' office and knocked on the door.

This time, he got straight to the point.

"Mr. Dalton, if I don't speak up now, we might not have time to fix things tonight."

James fixed his gaze on him. "Speak."

Michael closed the door and lowered his voice.

"Do you remember two years ago when the banks almost pulled Dalton Pharmaceuticals' loans? Someone spent a night lining up three funders and closed the gap.

"On the books it looked like a partner's bridge loan, and from beginning to end only one person signed the confirmation letter."

James stayed silent.

Michael went on. "Last year, when the shareholders moved against you and Edward Grant pushed for an audit, the reason it went away wasn't clean numbers. Someone had already straightened out the most sensitive line so the auditors had nowhere to start.

"And last month, when the raw material supplier threatened to stop shipping, everyone assumed they backed down on their own. Someone had already lined up an alternative through personal contacts, and the supply never stopped."

Michael finished recounting these three incidents without ever mentioning my name.

But James understood perfectly.

He stared at Michael for a long time before finally asking, "Why didn't you ever tell me about this before?"

Michael lowered his head. "We all thought you already knew."

The office went quiet for a long while after that.

James stood up, walked over to the window, and turned his back to Michael.

He didn't say a word.

Michael didn't leave.

Finally, James was the first to break the silence, his voice rough. "What was she really there for in the conference room yesterday?"

Michael looked up, answering slowly, "She scheduled a meeting with you two days ahead, registered the purpose as handing over risk materials. There was an irregular transaction in those documents, involving a payment handled by Sylvia, the VP. She came to warn you."

James turned around, and his face wasn't angry anymore. It held something he couldn't name.

Michael added quietly, "But yesterday, nobody gave her a chance to finish."

*****

After Michael left, James stayed in his office until almost ten.

He went through Dalton Pharmaceuticals' annual audit reports from the past three years and had Henry pull up some old contract attachments.

The more he looked, the more something felt off.

A lot of the deals he thought he had closed himself carried the same authorization number underneath, and that number always came back to me.

He kept flipping back, all the way to the year Dalton Pharmaceuticals was founded, and found the original equity structure sheet.

He remembered the equity split clearly. He held the majority, and the other cofounders each had a piece.

But there was a line of fine print at the bottom of the sheet that he had never read on the day he signed it.

[The core technology assets and related patent licenses are held independently by Party B, Vivian Wynn. Without Party B's written consent, they may not be transferred, pledged, or modified.]

James couldn't take his eyes off that line.

Henry knocked twice on the door. "Mr. Dalton, Mr. Edward Grant is on the line."

James picked up the phone.

Edward's voice was much heavier than usual. "James, what exactly are you planning to do about your wife?"

"What do you mean?" James asked.

"Don't play dumb. Two independent directors already came to me this afternoon, asking if something major was going on inside Dalton Pharmaceuticals. I've been trying to keep it under wraps all day, but I can't hold it back anymore."

James gripped his phone, saying nothing.

Edward paused, then added, "You really think all those resources came to you because of your reputation? There are some things you should've figured out a long time ago."

The call ended.

James sat back in his chair, and a memory suddenly flashed through his mind.

Three years earlier, right after we got married, I took a call in the study one night. James walked past and heard me going over a set of numbers with someone. The person on the line used my own family name for me and was more deferential than he had ever been with James.

James thought it was funny at the time. He assumed it was some small company on my side of the family and let it go.

Now, thinking about it, the project number mentioned in that call was the exact same authorization number he'd uncovered today.