Chapter 4

　　~ Nathan ~

　　"Nathan! Stop right there!"

　　Julian's voice boomed down the hallway.

　　I stopped right outside Victoria's office door. I turned around and saw my best friend running toward me. Julian was holding a black plastic binder tightly against his chest. His hair was messy. His face was pale, and he looked like he was about to throw up.

　　"Julian? What is wrong with you?" I asked. "Where are the auditors?"

　　Arthur and Victoria stepped out of the corner conference room right behind him. My father's jaw was set tight. Victoria looked down at the floor, wiping her eyes with a tissue as if she had been crying.

　　"We found where the money went, Nathan," Julian said. His voice shook. He grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the main conference room. "You need to sit down. You need to look at this right now."

　　"What are you talking about?" I asked, pulling my arm back. "I was just looking for Victoria. Maya said she was meeting with auditors."

　　"I was meeting with them because I found a mistake in the books, Nathan!" Victoria cried out. She stepped closer, her hands trembling. "I tried to tell myself it was nothing. I tried to protect you. But the auditors just confirmed it. Millions of dollars are missing."

　　"That is impossible," I said flatly. "Isabella checks those accounts every single morning. She just verified the numbers an hour ago."

　　"That is the problem, son," Arthur said softly. He placed a heavy, warm hand on my shoulder. His voice sounded lower than usual, full of sad weight. "She is the only person who has access to those private accounts. She is the one who moved the money."

　　My stomach dropped like a heavy stone. "No. That is ridiculous. Isabella would never steal from us. She built this company with me!"

　　"Look at the evidence, Nathan," Julian said. He threw the thick black binder onto the glass table. It landed with a loud, hard slap. "Don't take my word for it. Look at the digital footprints. Look at the numbers."

　　I stepped up to the table. My hands were cold. I opened the binder.

　　Page after page of bank logs stared up at me. Red lines marked every single transaction. Millions of dollars had been transferred out of Wolfe Enterprises over the past six months. The money was sent to shell companies in foreign countries—companies with strange, made-up names like Apex Global and Blue Horizon.

　　"Anyone could have set up these companies," I muttered, flipping through the pages faster. "This does not prove Isabella did it."

　　"Keep reading," Julian whispered. He pointed his finger at the bottom of the page. "Look at the security login details. Every single transfer was approved using a personal encryption key."

　　My eyes scanned the line of tiny text.

　　User ID: I_Hart_Wolfe.

　　IP Address: Terminal 04 (Executive Office - Isabella Hart).

　　Authorization Code: 8849-Alpha.

　　My heart hammered against my ribs. 8849-Alpha was Isabella's private password code. Nobody knew that code except her and me. She kept it written in a tiny notebook locked inside her top desk drawer.

　　"This... this has to be a system error," I said, my voice rising. " She told me Tom from IT told her they ran a software update last night. The servers are just glitched."

　　"I spoke to Tom five minutes ago," Julian said smoothly, looking me right in the eye. "He said there was no update. Isabella called him earlier today to ask if he could erase server logs from last night. He refused, so she tried to wipe the server herself. That is what triggered the encryption warning on her computer."

　　I stared at Julian. My brain began to race. Numbers did not lie. IP addresses did not lie. Passwords did not type themselves into computers. The data sitting in front of me was clear, cold, and solid.

　　"She was setting you up, Nathan," Victoria whispered, stepping up beside me. She put her hand on my arm. "She was putting all the fake companies under your family name, but routing the cash to her own private accounts. If the company went down during the merger, you would go to prison, and she would walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars."

　　"She never loved you, son," Arthur said. His voice was hard as iron now. "She came from nothing. She saw a rich family, and she took advantage of your good heart. She used you to build herself a fortune, and now she is trying to destroy the Wolfe family name before we find out."

　　"No," I breathed, shaking my head. "No, we just spoke in my office. She held my hand. She was worried about the transfers, I wasn't even paying attention to her. She looked into my eyes!"

　　"She is a liar, Nathan!" Arthur shouted, slamming his fist down on the glass table. "The evidence is right here in front of you! Are you going to let a thief ruin years of our family's hard work? Are you going to let her put your father and your sister in jail to save herself?"

　　My mind split in two. My heart was screaming that Isabella loved me. I remembered sleeping on the floor of our tiny first office, sharing a single cold slice of pizza, laughing until our stomachs hurt. I remembered her holding my hand when we bought this building.

　　But I looked at the paper. The digital trail was airtight. The code was hers. The computer was hers. The time stamps matched the exact hours I was in board meetings while she sat alone in her office. The logical math showed zero errors.

　　"Nathan," Julian said, his voice dropping to a serious tone. "The authorities are downstairs. The federal auditors called them when they saw the offshore accounts. They are coming up the elevator right now."

　　"What?" I gasped.

　　"You have to make a choice," Arthur said firmly. "Either you stand with your family and protect Wolfe Enterprises, or you go down with the woman who betrayed you. If you don't sign the corporate indictment papers right now, the government will freeze all our assets. The company will die today."

　　Julian pulled a blue pen from his jacket pocket and laid a single white document on top of the binder. It was an official corporate complaint. It stated that Wolfe Enterprises was formally accusing Isabella Hart of grand theft, corporate fraud, and embezzlement.

　　Before I could pick up the pen, the heavy double doors of the conference room swung open.

　　Federal agents in dark blue jackets filled the doorway. Right in front of them stood Isabella.

　　Maya was standing behind her, looking terrified. Isabella held a stack of freshly printed papers in her hands. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes were wide with confusion.

　　"Nathan!" Isabella said, stepping into the room. "Nathan, thank goodness. You need to see this. Someone copied my digital signature! They put it on foreign accounts, and the F.B.I. is in the lobby—"

　　She stopped talking when she saw Arthur, Victoria, Julian, and me standing around the table. She looked at the black binder. She looked at the federal agents standing right behind her.

　　"Nathan?" she asked softly. Her voice sounded small. "What is going on?"

　　I looked at her face. She looked so innocent. She looked like the same woman who had smiled at me this morning when I gave her the silver pen. But then my eyes dropped back to the black binder. The cold, hard numbers stared back up at me.

　　8849-Alpha.

　　"Did you do it, Isabella?" I asked. My voice shook so hard I could barely recognize it.

　　Isabella blinked, looking shocked. "Did I do what? Nathan, what are you talking about?"

　　"The foreign accounts!" I yelled, stepping toward her. My voice cracked with pure, bitter anger. "The shell companies! Apex Global! Blue Horizon! Millions of dollars moved using your private security code!"

　　"What? No!" Isabella shouted, taking a step toward me. She held out her printed papers. "Nathan, listen to me! Someone forged my name! I just printed these files to show you! I didn't move any money!"

　　"Stop lying to him!" Victoria yelled from behind me. "We have the server logs, Isabella! We know you asked Tom to erase the files!"

　　Isabella turned her head toward Victoria, her eyes flashing with anger. "I never spoke to Tom about erasing anything! I called him about a software update!"

　　"There was no software update, Isabella," Julian said, stepping forward with his hands in his pockets. He looked down at her with a sad, disappointed face. "I checked with IT myself. The logs show your computer made the transfers at two o'clock this morning."

　　Isabella looked at Julian, then at my Dad, and finally back at me. Her mouth stayed open for a second. "Nathan... you can't possibly believe this. You know me. We built this company together. Look at me!"

　　She took another step toward me, reaching her hand out to touch my arm.

　　"Don't touch me," I snapped, pulling my arm back.

　　Isabella froze. Her hand stayed hanging in the air. The color completely drained out of her face.

　　"Nathan, please," she whispered. Tears filled her eyes, but she didn't let them fall. "Just look at the papers in my hand. Let me explain how the signature was copied. Give me five minutes—"

　　"I don't want to hear your explanations!" I roared. The pain in my chest felt like a burning fire. I felt completely fooled. I felt like a blind idiot who had trusted the wrong person for eight years. "The data is airtight, Isabella! The math doesn't lie! You used my family! You used me!"

　　"I loved you!" she cried out, her voice breaking in the middle of the room. "I have loved you for years! How can you stand there and look at a piece of paper instead of looking at your wife?"

　　"Because the paper has facts!" I yelled back, pointing a shaking finger at the black binder. "And you only have stories!"

　　Arthur stepped up beside me and placed the blue pen into my shaking right hand.

　　"Sign the indictment, Nathan," Arthur commanded in a low, stern voice. "Save our legacy. Hand her over to the authorities before she drags you into a prison cell with her."

　　Isabella stared at the blue pen in my hand. Her eyes went wide with pure terror.

　　"Nathan, no," she breathed, taking a small step back. "If you sign that, they will arrest me. Please. Look at me. Don't do this."

　　My heart screamed at me to stop. It begged me to throw the pen away, to take my wife by the hand, and to figure out what was happening together. But no. I remembered the numbers. I saw the IP addresses. The data was the only thing that was real.

　　I turned my back on Isabella.

　　I leaned over the glass table. My hand trembled so badly the pen rattled against the paper. I pressed the tip of the pen down onto the signature line at the bottom of the formal corporate complaint.

　　"Nathan, please!" Isabella screamed from behind me.

　　I dragged the blue ink across the paper. I signed my full name: Nathaniel Wolfe, Chief Executive Officer.

　　I slammed the pen down on the glass table. I didn't turn around. I couldn't look at her.

　　"Take her away," Arthur ordered the federal agents.

　　I heard the rough scrape of heavy boots on the floor. I heard the cold, heavy clink of metal handcuffs snapping shut behind my back.

　　"Nathan!" Isabella sobbed, her voice full of absolute betrayal as they pulled her backward out the door. "Nathan, look at me! Look at what you're doing!"

　　I stood completely still, staring down at my dark signature on the white paper, while the sound of my wife's crying faded all the way down the long, empty hallway.