Chapter 3
Amaka broke the silence first, her fingers tracing the edge of a sleek silver pen lying beside her notepad. She did not pick it up; she merely touched it, as if testing its weight.
“Your firm has a formidable reputation for forensic accounting, Mr. Okoro,” she began, her tone conversational yet laced with a subtle edge. “When the board recommended your services for this internal audit, I must admit I was curious to see who they would send. I did not expect to see you walk through those doors.”
Julian kept his facial expressions neutral, drawing on years of corporate diplomacy to mask the turbulence beneath his skin. “The financial sector is smaller than most people realize, Madam CEO. Talent tends to rise to where it is needed.”
“Talent,” Amaka repeated, letting the word hang in the air for a second before letting out a dry, humorless breath. “Or perhaps persistence. Some men spend a lifetime trying to outrun their history, only to find that the past has already set up an office on the top floor waiting for their arrival.”
Julian felt a bead of sweat trace a slow path down his spine, despite the efficient climate control of the boardroom. He leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on the edge of the table. “If you have concerns regarding my qualifications or my objectivity, I suggest we take them up with the board members who retained my services. I am here to review the third-quarter asset allocation, nothing more and nothing less.”
“Are you?” Amaka asked softly. She finally looked away from him, turning her gaze toward the vast expanse of the city skyline outside the window, where the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, casting long, bruised shadows across the glass towers. “That is the trouble with audits, Julian. People always think they are looking at numbers, when in reality, they are looking at a confession.”
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She turned back to face him, her eyes locking onto his with an unyielding force. The use of his first name was deliberate, a boundary broken without permission, signaling that the corporate charade was over. Julian felt the blood rush to his ears, drowning out the faint hum of the building's ventilation system. He had spent ten years convincing himself that the past was a closed book, a chapter read and discarded. But sitting here in the penthouse suite of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, he realized the book had never been closed. It had merely been waiting for a new editor.
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