Chapter 3

　　~ Isabella ~

　　I slammed my office door shut and marched straight down the carpeted hallway toward Nathan's executive office. I did not look at the art on the walls or the shiny brass door handles. My hands were gripped tight around my yellow legal pad. The mysterious blinking red warning from my computer screen was burned into my mind, and my fingers were still cold from the shock.

　　I did not knock. I pushed the heavy oak door open and stepped inside.

　　Nathan sat behind his massive mahogany desk. A mountain of white paper folders covered the dark wood, nearly hiding his coffee mug. His tie was loosened at the collar, and his eyes were glued to his laptop screen. His fingers flew across the keyboard like a machine.

　　"Nathan," I said, stepping right up to the front of his desk. "We need to talk. Right now."

　　Nathan did not look up. He kept typing, his brown eyes darting back and forth across the screen. "Just give me five minutes, Bella. The legal team from London just sent over the revised merger contract. If I do not sign off on these thirty pages before noon, the whole deal slips back two weeks."

　　"This cannot wait five minutes," I said. I set my yellow pad on top of his open laptop keyboard, right over his hands.

　　Nathan stopped typing. He looked up at me, blinking twice as if he were waking up from a dream. He took a deep breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Bella, please. What is going on?"

　　"It is about the foreign bank accounts," I said, leaning down so my hands rested on the edge of his desk. "I saw weird numbers on my terminal an hour ago. Small amounts of money are moving out of our offshore accounts without any authorization. And then my screen locked up completely with an untraceable encryption warning."

　　Nathan let out a low sigh. He pulled my yellow pad off his keyboard and set it aside. "Isabella, we talked about this yesterday. The IT team ran a massive software update on the main servers last night. Tom already told you the system is glitching."

　　"This is not a software glitch, Nathan!" My voice came out sharper than I intended. I took a breath to calm myself down. "I know how our accounting software works. I helped build the tracking code three years ago when we were still working out of that tiny rental office. A glitch scrambles numbers. It does not send millions of dollars in small increments to unknown accounts."

　　Nathan stood up from his leather chair. He walked around the big desk, took my hands in his, and squeezed them gently. His palm was warm, but his brow was heavy with stress. "Bella, listen to me. We are forty-eight hours away from closing the biggest corporate merger in the history of this city. Wolfe Enterprises is about to double its market value. Everyone is nervous. Everyone is seeing ghosts."

　　"I am not seeing ghosts," I whispered, looking right into his eyes. "I am seeing missing money."

　　"And I am asking you to trust me," Nathan said softly. He let go of my hands, stepped behind me, and placed his hands gently on my shoulders. He guided me toward the huge, floor-to-ceiling glass window that formed the back wall of his office. "Look down there."

　　We stood together, sixty floors above the pavement. Below us, Manhattan looked like a giant toy set. Yellow taxi cabs crawled along the gray streets like tiny beetles. People walked along the sidewalks, so small they looked like dots of ink. The afternoon sun hit the glass towers across the street, throwing long, golden reflections across the floor.

　　"Remember when we had forty bucks in our joint bank account?" Nathan asked, his voice dropping into a quiet, steady tone. "We sat on the floor of that tiny apartment in Queens, eating three-dollar noodle soup, staring at a whiteboard full of business plans no investor would touch."

　　"I remember," I said, looking at our reflection in the tinted glass. "You swore we would buy a real desk by Christmas."

　　Nathan chuckled softly, though he looked exhausted. "We built all of this from nothing, Bella. Side by side. You are the smartest person I have ever known, and you are the backbone of this entire company. I would be completely lost without you."

　　He wrapped his arms around my waist from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder. I leaned back against his chest, listening to the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart. For a brief second, the tightness in my chest eased up.

　　"I just do not want anyone to ruin what we made," I murmured, watching a helicopter fly past the skyline.

　　"Nobody is going to ruin it," Nathan promised, his voice firm and steady. "I will always protect you, Bella. No matter what happens, no matter who tries to stand between us. I swear it."

　　"And I will protect you," I said, turning my head to look at him. "We are partners. Always."

　　Nathan smiled, bending down to press a soft kiss against my forehead. "Always. Now, let me finish reading these London papers, and then we will order lunch from that Italian place you like. Deal?"

　　"Deal," I said.

　　I gave his arm one last squeeze and turned toward the door. As my hand touched the brass handle, the door swung open fast, nearly hitting me.

　　Maya Lin stood in the doorway.

　　Maya was my best friend and Vanguard's top PR strategist. She usually walked into rooms with absolute confidence, her heels clicking loudly and a confident smile on her face. Today, she looked completely different. Her face was pale, her red lipstick looked smudged, and she held a dark leather folder tightly against her chest like a shield.

　　She stepped inside and slammed the door shut behind her. She turned the lock with a sharp clack.

　　"Maya?" I asked, taking a step back. "What is wrong?"

　　Maya looked at Nathan, then turned her sharp eyes to me. Her breathing was fast and shallow. "Nathan, you need to leave this room right now, or you need to shut up and listen to me very carefully."

　　Nathan frowned, stepping out from behind his desk. "Maya, what are you talking about? I have a merger to review."

　　"Forget the merger!" Maya snapped, her voice trembling with anger. She walked right up to us and lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. "I just came from the legal department on the forty-second floor. Victoria is downstairs."

　　Nathan rolled his eyes. "Victoria is always downstairs. She works here."

　　"She is not working, Nathan," Maya said, shaking her head violently. "She is sitting in the main audit conference room with three senior corporate auditors from the federal compliance board. They have been locked in there for two hours."

　　The room went completely quiet. The only sound was the faint hum of the air conditioner overhead.

　　Nathan's brow furrowed deeper. "Auditors? Why would Victoria be talking to compliance auditors? She does not handle financial reporting."

　　"I know she doesn't!" Maya whispered, pointing a finger at the door. "I walked past the glass wall to deliver the press releases. Victoria was sitting at the head of the table. She had a thick black binder open, and she was pointing at printouts of bank transfers. When she saw me looking through the glass, she pulled the blinds shut."

　　My stomach dropped like a heavy stone. "Was Arthur with her?"

　　"No," Maya said, turning to me. "Arthur was in his corner office talking on a private landline. But Victoria was handing those auditors official Wolfe Enterprises files. Bella, she is digging into the foreign accounts."

　　Nathan took a step toward his desk, his face hardening. "Victoria has no authority to hand over corporate files without my permission as CEO. I am going down there right now to see what she is playing at."

　　"Nathan, wait—" I started, reaching out for his arm.

　　"No," Nathan said, pulling his suit jacket on and buttoning it with quick, angry movements. "I am tired of my sister playing games to make herself look important. Stay here with Maya. I will handle this."

　　He unlocked the door, pulled it open, and marched down the hallway. His leather shoes struck the polished floor with loud, rhythmic thuds until he turned the corner.

　　Maya grabbed my forearm. Her grip was tight. "Bella, you need to check your main terminal right now."

　　"Why?" I asked, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird.

　　"Because when I looked through that glass wall before Victoria pulled the blinds, I saw the top page on the auditors' table," Maya said, her eyes wide with fear. "It had a big red stamp on it. It was a digital authorization form from the European shell company accounts."

　　"So?"

　　"Bella," Maya whispered, her voice shaking. "It had your personal executive signature at the bottom."

　　A cold wave of horror washed over me from head to toe. "That is impossible. I never signed any transfer documents for foreign shell companies. I do not even have the security clearance codes for those offshore accounts!"

　　"Then someone used your code," Maya said flatly. "Go to your desk. Now."

　　We ran down the corridor, our feet flying across the carpet. We burst into my office, and I threw myself into my desk chair. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely grip the computer mouse.

　　I pulled up the primary encrypted network. My fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, typing in my long, sixteen-character security password. The screen flashed white, then loaded the master administrative logs.

　　I clicked on the foreign account folder. A long list of recent transactions dropped down across the screen. Millions of dollars had been moved over the past six months. All of it went into five different accounts under names I had never seen in my life: Titan Holdings, Apex Global, Crestview Limited.

　　I double-clicked the authorization sheet for the largest transfer—four million dollars sent just three days ago.

　　The document loaded. I scrolled down to the very bottom line.

　　There it was.

　　My full legal name, Isabella Hart-Wolfe, was typed in black ink across the signature line. Right next to it was my private, encrypted digital security token—a thirty-digit string of numbers that only I was supposed to possess.

　　"No," I whispered, staring at the screen in pure disbelief. "No, no, no. This is wrong. I did not do this!"

　　"Look at the date," Maya said, leaning over my shoulder and pointing a trembling finger at the screen. "That transfer was approved on Tuesday night at eleven p.m. Bella, where were you on Tuesday night?"

　　"I was at home!" I cried out, my voice cracking. "I was in the Hamptons with Nathan! We were at dinner with his family!"

　　"Someone copied your digital key," Maya said, her face turning completely white. "Someone who had access to your private office or your encrypted drive. They forged your signature on every single one of these illegal transfers."

　　"Victoria," I breathed, the realization hitting me like a physical punch to the chest. "Victoria planted these digital footprints. She made it look like I was stealing money from Nathan's company. Her conversation during the dinner was suspicious. Oh my God!" I gasped heavily.

　　I grabbed the mouse, clicked print, and watched as my desk printer roared to life. Warm paper began spitting out into the tray, page after page of fake approvals carrying my forged name.

　　"I need to find Nathan," I said, grabbing the warm stack of paper off the tray. "I have to show him the timestamps. I have to prove I was with him when these files were signed."

　　"Bella, listen to me—" Maya began.

　　THUD. THUD. THUD.

　　A series of heavy, echoing booms rattled the glass walls of my office. It came from the main elevator bank in the central lobby.

　　Shouts filled the building. Desk chairs scraped hard against the floor out in the main bullpen. People were screaming.

　　"FBI! Nobody move!" a loud, booming voice barked through a megaphone. "Step away from your computers! Put your hands on top of your desks immediately!"

　　I froze. The stack of paper felt heavy and hot in my hands.

　　Through the glass wall of my office, I watched as dozens of federal agents in dark blue jackets flooded out of the main elevators. They carried heavy black equipment bags, and gold badges flashed brightly under the fluorescent lights. They moved fast, fanning out across the floor, locking down every exit, and pulling staff away from their terminals.

　　Before I could step toward the door to find my husband, three agents turned the corner and headed straight for my office.