Chapter 4 - The Copier Room Secret
Mason did not flinch, but his eyes narrowed until they resembled two chips of polished blue sapphire.
"Looting is a very specific legal term, Harper," he murmured as the waitress set down two steaming ceramic mugs.
"I am an investment strategist, Mason, not an emotional disgruntled employee," I replied, pulling the leather notebook from the open box.
I flipped past pages of dense mathematical models until I reached the entries from five months ago.
"When Arthur had his medical incident last autumn, Alden reassigned me to the copy supply room on the eastern corridor," I explained.
"He claimed my corner office was required for the incoming technical infrastructure team."
"He put the most brilliant mind in the firm next to an industrial toner machine?" Mason asked, his voice laced with incredulity.
"He thought the humiliation would make me resign quietly without claiming severance," I said, a bitter smile touching my lips.
"What Alden failed to realize is that the copy room houses the master network routing hardware for the legacy servers."
"The servers that Arthur kept off the cloud for security reasons," Mason noted instantly, catching my drift.
"Every single inter-departmental wire transfer, cross-collateral ledger, and internal memo passes through those legacy caches," I whispered.
"I started noticing irregular journal entries in March."
"Alden was moving capital from client reserve funds into private offshore holding companies registered in the Cayman Islands."
"To cover what?" Mason demanded, leaning forward until his chest pressed against the table edge.
"He lost eighty million dollars shorting pharmaceutical stocks during the spring volatility," I said, turning the notebook toward him.
"He didn't tell his father, he didn't tell the risk committee, and he certainly didn't disclose it on your quarterly statements."
Mason pulled a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses from his breast pocket and began scanning my handwritten audit logs.
His jaw hardened into granite with every line he read.
"He fabricated twenty-four percent returns on my green energy portfolio to conceal the shortfall," Mason whispered, horrified.
"He didn't just fabricate the returns," I said quietly, tapping a red line at the bottom of the ledger.
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"He used your principal capital as collateral to secure a predatory bridge loan from a private equity firm in Zurich."
"If that loan defaults at the end of this fiscal quarter, your two billion dollars is legally encumbered."
