Chapter 2 - The Name On The LedgerLauren left the restaurant without saying goodbye.
Ethan watched through the glass as she crossed the sidewalk, nearly tripping over the curb.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You know what the message meant?”
“No.”
That was the truth.
I had spent the last five years building restaurants.
I understood suppliers, leases, payroll, inspections, customer complaints, kitchen fires and impossible investors.
I did not understand secret ledgers.
Ethan looked back at me.
“Do you want me to cancel the meeting entirely?”
“It doesn't matter.”
He frowned.
“It matters to me.”
I gave him a tired smile.
“Ethan, she embarrassed me. That's all.”
“No.”
His voice became firmer.
“She didn't just embarrass you.”
He glanced toward the door.
“She reacted like someone who had been caught.”
I said nothing.
That night, I changed clothes and went upstairs to my office.
My restaurant occupied the first two floors of the building.
The office was small.
I preferred it that way.
There was an old oak desk, two monitors, a wall of framed licenses and a single photograph of my mother.
She was smiling in it.
She had hated having her picture taken.
I picked up the frame.
My mother had worked two jobs for most of my childhood.
She cleaned hotel rooms in the morning.
She worked evenings at a grocery store.
She raised me alone after my father disappeared.
The same man Lauren used to joke about.
The same woman Lauren once called “the cleaning lady.”
I put the frame back.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I stared at the message.
Stop digging into Lauren Pierce.
Another message arrived.
She isn't the person you remember.
I typed:
Who is this?
No answer.
Instead, another photograph appeared.
It was old.
Very old.
A yearbook page.
Westbridge High.
I zoomed in.
There I was.
Seventeen years younger.
Standing in the back row.
Next to me was Lauren.
Smiling.
Then I noticed something.
A third person stood partly behind us.
A boy.
I recognized him immediately.
Daniel Cross.
My stomach dropped.
Daniel had been Lauren's boyfriend during senior year.
He had disappeared from school three months before graduation.
Nobody ever explained why.
I had forgotten about him.
Or at least I had tried to.
A knock came at the door.
I put my phone face down.
“Come in.”
It was Marcus, my operations director.
He held a folder.
“Sorry. I know it's late.”
“What happened?”
He shut the door.
“We found something strange in the inventory accounts.”
I stared at him.
“What kind of strange?”
“Three supplier invoices were altered.”
“By whom?”
“We don't know.”
“Amounts?”
He handed me the folder.
I scanned the numbers.
The first invoice was for refrigeration equipment.
The second was for imported wine.
The third was for kitchen machinery.
All had been inflated.
Not by much.
Five hundred here.
Eight hundred there.
Two thousand somewhere else.
It wasn't enough to attract attention.
It was enough to steal money slowly.
“How long?”
Marcus shook his head.
“We traced it back nine months.”
“Could it be an accounting error?”
“I thought so.”
He placed another document on my desk.
“This is why I don't think it is.”
At the bottom of the page was a digital authorization.
My name.
My signature.
I stared at it.
I had never signed that document.
Marcus lowered his voice.
“Someone has access to your approval credentials.”
A chill moved down my spine.
“Who?”
“We don't know.”
My phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
This time the message was shorter.
Ask Lauren what happened to Daniel.
I looked up at Marcus.
“Did you know a man named Daniel Cross?”
He thought for a moment.
“No.”
“He was at my high school.”
Marcus nodded.
“Why?”
I turned the phone toward him.
He read the message.
Neither of us spoke.
Then the office door handle moved.
Slowly.
Someone was trying to open it from the outside.
Marcus stood.
“Did you lock it?”
“Yes.”
The handle stopped.
A second later, footsteps moved away.
Fast.
Marcus opened the door.
Nobody was there.
But something was lying on the hallway carpet.
A small black envelope.
My name was written on it.
Not printed.
Handwritten.
I opened it with shaking fingers.
Inside was a single photocopy.
A page from an accounting ledger.
At the top was a company name.
PIERCE FINANCIAL GROUP
Below it were dozens of payments.
And beside several of them was one repeated notation.
M.P.
My initials.
I stared at the page.
My name wasn't just on a forged restaurant invoice.
May you like
Someone had been using my identity for years.
And apparently, they had started doing it long before I ever became successful.
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