Chapter 2 - The Seven Victims
Ten minutes later, the atmosphere inside Daniel’s vast, mahogany-paneled home library was thick with tension.
Standing near the floor-to-ceiling windows, handcuffed behind his back, was Thomas Harrison. The fifty-four-year-old estate manager, who had served the Whitmore family for eight years, was sweating profusely through his tailored linen suit. Vance stood beside him like a tall, silent sentinel, arms folded across his chest.
Sitting at the large glass desk across the room were Daniel, Rosa, and his head corporate forensic accountant, Sarah Lin, who had been summoned from the city on emergency notice.
Sarah’s fingers flew across her laptop keyboard as she cross-referenced the house’s master payroll portal with the actual bank routing receipts obtained via emergency subpoena from Whitmore Capital’s legal division.
"It’s not just Rosa, Daniel," Sarah said, her voice grave as she looked up from her dual monitors. "It’s systematic."
Daniel leaned back in his leather chair, his face dark. "How many?"
"Seven employees," Sarah read off the list. "Rosa Martinez, the head housekeeper. Two junior groundskeepers. The head chef, Marcus. The laundry assistant. And two maintenance technicians who work the night shift. Every single one of them has had their wages routed to shell accounts for the past ninety days."
"What is the total amount stolen?" Daniel demanded.
"Eighty-four thousand dollars over three months," Sarah reported. "The money was diverted through a series of local credit unions before being consolidated into a single private account held by a offshore shell company registered in Delaware."
Daniel turned his gaze slowly toward Harrison. The estate manager flinched under the burning weight of Daniel’s eyes.
"Eighty-four thousand dollars, Thomas," Daniel said quietly. "You stole from a mother who works sixteen hours a day to feed her child. You let her get threatened with eviction while you sat in my kitchen eating meals cooked by people you were starving."
Harrison swallowed hard, his face pale and slick with sweat. "Daniel... please. You don't understand. I... I was forced into this. I didn't keep a single dollar of that money!"
"Don't lie to me!" Daniel snapped, slamming his hand onto the mahogany desk so hard the glass paperweight rattled. "You had master administrative access to the household database! Only you and I held the encryption keys!"
"I didn't steal it for myself!" Harrison cried out, his voice cracking with desperation as he took a step forward, only for Vance to push him firmly back. "I was given the routing numbers three months ago! I was told that if I didn't update the system, I would be fired immediately and blacklisted from every estate management firm in the country!"
"Told by who?" Daniel demanded, standing up slowly. "Who gave you those routing numbers?"
Harrison looked around the room frantically, his eyes darting toward the security cameras mounted near the ceiling as if he expected someone to pull a trigger through the glass.
"Tell me, Thomas!" Daniel roared.
Harrison let out a ragged, trembling breath. "Your brother," he whispered. "Julian."
The room fell completely silent.
Outside the tall windows, the wind howled through the manicured hedges of the estate, carrying the faint, distant rumble of an approaching autumn storm.
Daniel stood completely still, the air leaving his lungs in a cold, heavy rush.
Julian Whitmore. His younger brother by three years.
Julian was the family’s golden boy—charming, volatile, and perpetually broke. While Daniel had built Whitmore Capital through relentless work, discipline, and strategic ruthlessness, Julian had spent his life bouncing between failed luxury ventures, racecar sponsorships, and high-stakes gambling dens in Macau and Monte Carlo.
Six months ago, Julian had come to Daniel begging for a twenty-million-dollar bailout to settle debts incurred by his failing yacht charter company. Daniel had refused, offering instead to place Julian on a strict corporate allowance tied to mandatory financial rehabilitation. Julian had walked out of the office screaming, swearing that he would get what was rightfully his.
"Julian?" Daniel asked, his voice chillingly low. "Julian ordered you to steal eighty thousand dollars from the house staff? That’s chump change for him."
"It wasn't about the eighty thousand dollars, Daniel!" Harrison stammered, tears of terror filling his eyes. "The staff payroll was just a test! He wanted to see if he could breach your personal encryption servers without triggering your corporate red flags! He was testing the backdoor access!"
Sarah’s hands suddenly froze over her keyboard. She looked up at Daniel, her eyes wide with shock.
"Daniel... look at this," Sarah said, her voice shaking slightly. "Harrison is telling the truth."
Daniel stepped around the desk to look at Sarah’s screen.
"When Julian’s backdoor script altered the routing numbers for the domestic staff three months ago," Sarah explained, pointing to a complex string of code running on her screen, "it didn't just touch the household checking account. It planted a silent worm inside your personal server—the one connected to the Whitmore Family Estate Trust."
Daniel’s blood ran cold. The Estate Trust was the central vault holding forty percent of Whitmore Capital’s total voting shares, along with the physical deeds to every piece of property owned by their late father, Arthur Whitmore.
"Is the trust intact?" Daniel asked, his voice strained.
"The digital assets are still there," Sarah replied, scrolling rapidly through lines of security code. "But... Daniel, look at the access logs. Three days ago, someone logged into the trust portal using your father's old administrative emergency passkey. They authorized a physical transfer request."
"A physical transfer request?" Daniel repeated, frowning. "What physical transfer?"
May you like
Sarah looked up at him, her expression grim.
"They requested the physical deed and original corporate ledger stored in the secure subterranean vault beneath your garage," Sarah said softly. "The folder labeled FOR DANIEL AND JULIAN."
