Chapter 8 - The Secret Phone Call “Who is calling me at this hour? I’m at the hospital.”
“It’s me, Marcus. I heard about what happened at the office.”
“This isn't a good time, Marcus. My son is in the ICU.”
“I know about the boy, Adrian. But we have a bigger problem.”
“What are you talking about? The merger is signed, it's over.”
“The board found the discrepancy in the ledger before the police did.”
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The vibration of Adrian’s phone against the metal table of the interrogation room had been ignored for an hour until Detective Miller briefly left to fetch more coffee. Seizing the momentary privacy, Adrian snatched the device and hit answer, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. Marcus, his chief financial officer and closest corporate ally, sounded breathless and terrified on the other end of the line. Adrian’s blood ran cold as the reality of his double life rushed back to the surface, temporarily eclipsed by the emergency with his son. For months, to finance a high-risk venture that was supposed to secure his family’s financial future, Adrian had covertly borrowed against the company’s escrow accounts, assuming he could replace the funds before anyone noticed. But the sudden police investigation into the vehicle incident had triggered an automatic internal audit of all corporate holdings, exposing the massive financial fraud to the board of directors. Marcus warned him that federal investigators had already been notified regarding the missing millions, completely separate from the local child endangerment charges. Adrian closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the concrete wall of the police station as the walls of his entire existence collapsed simultaneously. He was facing the very real possibility of losing his son, his wife, his freedom, and his entire professional legacy in a single, catastrophic twenty-four-hour window. Detective Miller’s heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway outside the door, signaling the end of his brief respite. Adrian snapped the phone shut, shoved it into his pocket, and forced his face into a mask of stoic compliance as the door handle began to turn.
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