Chapter 13 — The Audit Word
The first time I heard Victor Lang say the word audit, he sounded less angry than afraid.
That mattered.
Angry men blamed people. Afraid men moved evidence.
I was kneeling outside his study door, cleaning the brass strip at the base of the frame while the house pretended to be quiet around me.
Rain tapped softly against the windows.
Staff moved in distant rooms.
Diana was upstairs behind closed curtains.
Victor was inside with his phone on speaker.
He thought the door was thick enough.
Rich men often confused expense with protection.
“No,” he said. “Not internal.”
A pause.
“I said not internal. I want outside counsel involved before anyone from the board smells blood.”
My cloth moved along the brass.
Outside counsel. Board.
Blood.
Useful words.
Then came the one that sharpened the room.
“Audit.”
The cloth stopped for half a second, then continued.
Victor lowered his voice, but fear had already given it edges.
“If the audit reaches the old schedule, Ryan becomes exposed.”
Another pause.
“And if Ryan becomes exposed, he talks.”
There it was.
Ryan was not a partner in Victor’s world.
He was a fuse.
Victor continued, “The original must stay off-site before Friday.”
Off-site.
So it was still in the house now, but not for long.
I shifted my weight and leaned closer to the lower panel of the door.
A floorboard behind me gave a faint sigh.
I froze.
Inside, Victor said, “No copies. No scans. The paper is the risk.”
Paper was the risk.
Paper was what my father had warned me about.
Paper was why I was wearing gloves in a corridor instead of sitting behind the desk of a company Ryan could not imagine I owned.
The call ended.
I had three seconds.
I dipped the cloth into polish and spread it across the brass just as the study door opened.
Victor stood above me, his shoes stopping inches from my knees.
I looked up only enough to show obedience, not interest.
“Still here?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. The housekeeper wanted the frame cleaned before evening.”
He glanced at the brass strip. It already shone.
His eyes narrowed. “You are thorough.”
“I try to be.”
“Thorough people can become inconvenient.”
I lowered my gaze again. “That depends on what they notice, sir.”
The words were too close to a challenge.
I knew it the moment they left my mouth.
Victor went still.
For a dangerous second, the whole corridor seemed to hold its breath.
Then he laughed softly. “You speak better than most agency girls.”
“I read, sir.”
“What do you read?”
“Instructions.”
His smile thinned.
“Clean the guest rooms next. This wing is finished.”
“Of course.”
I gathered the cloth and polish tin carefully, making sure the recorder in my pocket did not tap the metal lid.
As I stood, Victor’s phone buzzed again.
Ryan Hart flashed on the screen before he turned it away.
He muttered, “Not now.”
When I reached the linen cupboard, I played the captured audio.
The words were clean enough.
Audit. Original. Ryan exposed. Paper is the risk. Friday.
Marcus replied almost at once: If he moves it Friday, we have less than four days.
Four days was not time. It was a fuse.
A deadline changes a house.
It makes every drawer look alive, every servant seem like a witness, every quiet room feel as if it is holding its breath.
Victor had given me the one thing careful men hate to give.
Timing.
It turned fear into a calendar, and calendars were easier to attack than rumours.
I looked down the corridor towards the locked lower wing.
Victor thought the risk was paper.
He was wrong.
The risk was that the maid now knew when he planned to move it.