Chapter 38
The Ashes We Hide
But this wasn’t just any audit.
This was her.
:
He pulled the chair closer, fingers resting on the worn edge of his desk. The skyline behind him had dimmed. The last of the afternoon sunlight spilled across the glass, catching dust motes in flight. He didn’t look up.
Instead, he opened the folder.
At first, it was routine. Old financials. Tax returns. A few medical claim records none of them hers, all tied to her father’s collapse. Legal scraps from the Monroe estate. Nothing out of place.
Until he found it.
A single page. Thin. Crisp. Dated exactly eight days after Vivienne left him without a word.
Bank transfer confirmation.
$750,000.
From an anonymous offshore account.
To a name he hadn’t seen in years.
Vivienne M. Calloway.
He blinked.
The date was too precise. The source is too clean. The account has since been closed. Frozen. Wiped.
He leaned back, one hand to his jaw.
She had left.
With nothing but a coat, a silent goodbye, and this?
He picked up his phone, typed the digits into his internal systems, and waited.
Nothing.
The transaction trail hit a firewall. No routing logs. No paper trail. Only the sum.
A fortune.
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Chapter 38
A bribe.
22.00
Or a pavoft
He looked at her name again. Vivienne M. Calloway. She’d still been using his last name then. Still tethered to him by law if not by
choice.
He stood slowly, walked to the bar, poured two fingers of bourbon but didn’t drink. The amber light caught the glass, throwing warped reflections onto the steel countertop.
Why would anyone pay her to disappear?
Who would benefit?
And why did it feel like someone had torn open a door in a house he thought condemned?
He sat back down.
Opened a search field.
Typed: “Vivienne Monroe + bank transfer.”
Nothing. No articles. No investigation. No whispers.
He cross–referenced with internal Calloway audit trails. Nothing.
Then he typed a name he hadn’t used in years. One connected to the Monroe estate. The lawyer who’d handled her father’s dying business. The man Magnus once accused of laundering the last of the Monroe money.
Daniel Firth.
The system spits out one hit. A transfer was routed through a Firth Consulting branch six days before Vivienne left.
Six days.
Two days before the transfer landed in her name.
He froze.
Someone had cleaned the path. Quietly. Professionally.
And Vivienne had vanished right after.
He pulled open another drawer. Spread three more folders out across the desk. The clock ticked above him. Fifteen minutes passed. Thirty. His phone buzzed twice with meeting reminders. He ignored them.
He flipped one document after another, searching for names. Vendors. Witnesses. Any link.
Nothing concrete.
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Chapter 38
But all of it stank
He opened the slip again and stared at it.
One question burned a hole into his chest.
Why was she paid to disappear?
Vivienne never liked silence in the mornings. Not this kind.
The quiet of Magnus’s house was too deliberate and too expensive. Everything was soft–close, noise–canceling, engineered to mute. But when she opened the front door to let in the paper, it was the sound of nothing that made her pause.
Something was wrong.
The envelope wasn’t there earlier. She was sure of it. She’d checked.
Now it lay neatly folded at the threshold, like an offering. Or a warning.
Cream paper. Thick. No stamp. No handwriting. Just weight and stillness.
She bent down slowly, eyes darting to the hallway, to the corners of the porch. No one. Nothing. The street was calm, the same as always. The hedge line is undisturbed. The security camera made a mental note to check it.
She picked up the envelope.
It was warm from the sun.
She stepped back inside and closed the door behind her. Turned the lock. Twice.
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