Katherine's POV
Katherine arrived at Devereaux Technologies at 5:47 AM.
The building was empty. The lobby was dark except for emergency lighting. The elevators barely made a sound as she rode up to the top floor. She'd timed it carefully. Early enough that James wouldn't be here yet. Early enough that she could set up her workspace and start analyzing files before she had to see his face again.
She didn't trust herself with a second encounter.
The vacant office on the seventh floor was exactly what she needed. Small. Quiet. Far enough from James's office that she wouldn't accidentally run into him in the hallway. Katherine set up her laptop and connected to the company servers using the access codes the board had given her.
By 6:15 AM, she was pulling financial records.
By 6:45 AM, she'd identified the first problem.
The supply chain management was a disaster. Contracts with vendors who were clearly overcharging. Delivery schedules that didn't align with actual business needs. Relationships with suppliers that made no logical sense from a financial perspective. Katherine started building a spreadsheet. She pulled invoices. She compared prices. She traced patterns.
None of it made sense unless someone was deliberately choosing the wrong vendors.
By noon, she had three major problems documented. By 1 PM, she'd found a pattern. By 2:30 PM, she had evidence.
Someone on the executive team was funneling money to specific vendors. Vendors that were owned by shell companies. Shell companies that traced back to accounts she didn't recognize. Katherine followed the money like she was reading a story someone was trying to hide. And the story was clear once you knew where to look.
Sabotage.
She printed everything and spread it across her desk like a map of betrayal. This was her superpower. She could look at systems falling apart and understand exactly why. She could see the pattern before anyone else saw it. She could solve problems without getting emotionally involved because problems weren't personal. They were just numbers that told a story if you listened hard enough.
Katherine was so deep in the data that she almost didn't hear the knock on her door.
James stood there at 3:15 PM holding two cups of coffee.
He looked like he'd been awake all night. His hair was messy like he'd been running his hands through it. His eyes had dark circles underneath them. He was still wearing the same suit from this morning which meant he'd probably been in the office since she'd left his conference room.
"I thought you might need this," he said, setting one of the cups on her desk.
Katherine's immediate instinct was to tell him to take it away. To tell him she didn't need his coffee or his concern or his attempts to soften her toward him. She was about to say exactly that when James turned to look at her desk.
His eyes landed on the papers spread across every surface.
He saw the evidence before Katherine could stop him.
"What is this?" he asked, moving closer. His voice had changed. It wasn't soft anymore. It was sharp. It was the voice of a man who'd just realized something terrible.
Katherine wanted to lie. Wanted to say it was nothing. Wanted to protect him from what she'd found the way she used to protect him from everything that might hurt him.
She was done protecting him.
"Someone is stealing from your company," Katherine said, standing up. "And they've been doing it for a long time. The evidence is right here."
James started reading through the documents. She could see his face changing as he understood what the numbers were showing him. See him realizing that someone he trusted had been betraying him. See him understanding exactly how deep the sabotage went.
"Who?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"I'm not sure yet," Katherine said. "But the pattern shows it's someone with access to your accounts. Someone with authorization to approve vendor contracts. Someone on your executive team."
James's hands were shaking as he picked up one of the documents.
"I know who it is," he said. And when he looked at Katherine, his eyes were completely broken. "I just didn't want to believe it."
Before Katherine could ask him who, her phone buzzed.
It was a message from the board chairman. He was calling an emergency meeting. The subject was: "Immediate Investigation into Financial Irregularities and Executive Misconduct."
The time was: now.
The location was: the executive boardroom.
Katherine's stomach dropped.
"They know," she said, showing James the message.
"Victoria told me this morning," James said quietly. "I called security. I asked them to freeze my accounts and pull surveillance footage. And then you came back saying the same thing. Which means she's already realized we know."
He looked at Katherine and something in his expression shifted.
"We need to go to this meeting together," he said. "I can't let you go in there alone. If Victoria knows that you found the evidence, she's going to try to discredit you. She's going to try to make it look like you're the problem."
Katherine wanted to tell him she didn't need his protection. Wanted to remind him that she'd spent three years building a reputation strong enough to survive anything. Wanted to walk into that boardroom alone and present her findings without his help.
But she also knew Victoria Chen well enough to understand that James was right.
They rode the elevator up to the executive floor together in silence.
When the doors opened, they found the boardroom already full. Richard Chen was there. The CFO was there. Three other board members. And Victoria sat at the head of the table looking completely composed, like she was about to present a quarterly earnings report instead of defend herself against charges of theft.
"James," she said, smiling. "Katherine. Good timing. I was just about to tell the board something very important about your new financial advisor."
She pulled out a folder.
"I have evidence that Katherine Hayes has been recommending specific vendors to this company in exchange for personal financial kickbacks. I have bank records showing payments made from these vendors directly to accounts registered under Katherine's name. And I have communications proving that Katherine deliberately sabotaged our company infrastructure to make herself look like a necessary savior."
Richard looked at James.
James looked at Katherine.
And Katherine felt her entire world tilt sideways because she knew exactly what was happening.
Victoria wasn't just accusing her of sabotage.
Victoria was framing her.
And the documents Victoria was holding looked official. They looked real. They looked exactly like the kind of evidence that would destroy Katherine's reputation and send her to prison for fraud.
Katherine opened her mouth to defend herself.
But before she could say a single word, James stood up.
"That's a lie," he said calmly. "And I can prove it."
He pulled out his phone and pressed play on a video.
And what appeared on the screen made everyone in the room go completely still.
Because the video showed Victoria in James's office. The video showed Victoria telling James about her plan. The video showed her saying she was going to frame Katherine. The video showed her saying she'd been stealing from the company for three years.
Victoria's face went completely white.
"You recorded me," she said, her voice shaking.
"I did," James said. "And you're done."
Security appeared at the boardroom door.
But before Victoria could be escorted out, she looked directly at Katherine with an expression of pure rage.
"You think you've won," Victoria said. "But this isn't over. I know things about you that are going to make this look like nothing."
She looked at James.
"I know things about both of you that are going to destroy everything you've rebuilt."
And then she was gone.
The boardroom was silent.
Katherine's heart was racing and she realized something terrifying. Victoria had been caught. The evidence was clear. The sabotage was exposed.
But Victoria's final threat had made something crystal clear.
This wasn't about the company anymore.
This was about something much more personal. Something that Victoria had been waiting three years to expose.
And Katherine had no idea what it was.