Chapter 4 - THE APPROVALS
Victoria’s next objective was to determine whether the suspicious payments were real or manufactured evidence planted for Elena to find. She asked Marcus Bell to meet away from headquarters without telling Lydia. Marcus arrived at a private conference suite with the irritated expression of a CFO who had already spent two days answering questions from lawyers.
He recognized Northbridge Advisory immediately. According to Marcus, it was one of several consulting entities used during a restructuring of the Harrington Employee Relief Trust. The trust had originally been created after a fatal warehouse fire six years earlier to support injured workers and the families of employees who died. Once major claims were paid, remaining funds were supposed to be transferred into a broader employee-support program.
Victoria remembered signing the restructuring. She did not remember authorizing millions of dollars in consulting payments.
Marcus opened archived reports. Every suspicious transfer contained Victoria’s executive authorization token and his finance approval. He insisted the payments were based on legal instructions saying the consultants were handling claims reconciliation, tax exposure, and settlement administration.
“Who gave you those instructions?”
“Legal.”
“Lydia?”
“Sometimes Lydia. Sometimes her team.”
Marcus immediately realized what he had said and became more careful. He reminded Victoria that general counsel supervised dozens of lawyers and outside firms. A legal instruction bearing Lydia’s department code did not mean Lydia personally created it.
Victoria asked why Elena wrote that the payments continued after the fund closed. Marcus admitted he had noticed that too. He said legal explained that unresolved claims and indemnity obligations remained active even after the public-facing trust was terminated.
That answer contained enough truth to be plausible.
Then Victoria asked to see the vendor contracts.
Three could not be located.
One existed only as a scanned signature page attached to an unsigned services schedule.
Another contract listed an office address that belonged to a mailbox center.
Marcus’s confidence weakened.
Victoria returned to the payment authorizations. Her digital signature appeared on every one, but several approvals had occurred while she was traveling. One $680,000 transfer was approved at 2:17 a.m. New York time while Victoria was asleep on an overnight flight to London.
Marcus said executive approvals could be queued before processing.
Victoria’s independent technology consultant disagreed. The token logged the moment of authentication, not the later processing time.
Someone had authenticated as Victoria while she was physically unavailable.
The discovery shifted the mystery from suspicious accounting to deliberate impersonation.
Detective Kim obtained another useful record. The company’s personnel system showed that Elena’s resignation was approved by Victoria’s executive account at 11:48 Monday night.
The same minute Victoria’s flight crossed over Pennsylvania.
Victoria’s airline had Wi-Fi, but she had not connected. Her phone records confirmed it.
Someone inside Harrington Group was using her executive identity.
Then security footage created a second problem.
At 2:13 Tuesday morning, hours after Elena’s badge was disabled, a person entered the twenty-ninth-floor records suite using Victoria’s executive access credential. The hallway camera captured only the back of a dark coat and a brief glimpse of brown hair.
The person could have been Victoria.
Except Victoria was still in New York.
The access credential was physical.
Her executive card had been in her handbag.
Victoria remembered leaving that handbag in Lydia Shaw’s conference room for almost an hour the previous Friday while attending a board luncheon downstairs.
For the first time, suspicion acquired a specific direction.
Before Victoria could decide what to do with it, her phone received an alert from Harrington Group security.
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Her executive credentials had just been revoked.
The board had called an emergency meeting.
