Chapter 4 - The Man They Framed Twice
By Friday morning, Ethan Blake was suspended.
Not fired.
Not accused publicly.
Suspended with pay pending investigation.
Clare still hated it.
The reason was simple.
At 9:16 Thursday night, investigators found the downloaded employee bank-routing file on a secure internal server folder connected to Ethan's financial operations credentials.
At 9:21, they found a copy of the Northshore payment history on his work laptop.
At 9:43, security discovered that Ethan had accessed three of the same project codes linked to Marcus Vale in the previous month.
By 10:05, the evidence looked terrible.
Too terrible.
Clare stood in Aleandro's office with both hands planted on his desk.
“You cannot do this again.”
Aleandro remained behind the desk.
“I suspended him. I did not terminate him.”
“You were about to.”
“I was considering it.”
“You were angry.”
“He had confidential employee banking information stored under his credentials.”
“So did I. According to the logs.”
“That is different.”
“Why?”
“Because I know you did not do it.”
Clare's eyes narrowed.
“That is exactly the problem.”
Aleandro went still.
She straightened.
“You believe me because you know me. You doubt Ethan because you don't. That is not evidence.”
His jaw tightened.
“He had access.”
“So did dozens of people with system privileges, shared terminals, administrative tokens, or compromised credentials.”
“You are defending him.”
“I am defending the process.”
“Convenient distinction.”
Clare stared at him.
Then understood.
“This is jealousy.”
“No.”
“It is.”
“Clare—”
“You are angry that he knows my coffee order and now your brain has decided he is a criminal mastermind.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Yes. It is.”
He stood.
The room changed when Aleandro stood angry.
Most people would have stepped back.
Clare did not.
“I am not going to let someone hurt this company because I am worried about appearing jealous,” he said.
“And I am not going to let you destroy an innocent employee because you are worried about being fooled.”
Silence.
The words landed between them.
Destroy an innocent employee.
Peter Harris.
The bracelet.
The beginning of everything.
Aleandro looked away first.
Clare's voice softened.
“You promised me you were learning.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them, the anger had not disappeared.
But control had returned.
“What do you want?”
“Independent forensic review. No assumptions. No private pressure. No executive shortcuts.”
“He remains suspended.”
“Yes.”
“You do not contact him about the investigation.”
“Yes.”
“You do not investigate alone.”
Clare hesitated.
“Clare.”
“Fine.”
Aleandro looked at her for several seconds.
Then picked up his phone.
“Miriam. Expand the forensic team. Ethan Blake is not to be treated as a suspect without corroboration. Preserve everything.”
He listened.
“Yes. Everything.”
He ended the call.
Clare exhaled.
“Thank you.”
“I still do not trust him.”
“You don't have to.”
“I don't like him either.”
“That part I knew.”
For one second, the tension almost broke.
Then Daniel entered without knocking.
“We found something.”
He placed a report on Aleandro's desk.
“The workstation that accessed Ms. Morgan's account in Rebecca Sloan's office was physically active at 12:06. But Ms. Sloan was on camera entering the cafeteria at 12:04 and not returning until 12:19.”
Clare frowned.
“So someone used her office.”
“Possibly.”
“Door logs?”
“Her office door was unlocked.”
“Camera?”
“The corridor camera lost signal for eight minutes.”
Aleandro looked at Daniel.
“Lost signal.”
“Yes.”
“Accidentally?”
“We are examining that.”
Clare picked up the report.
“Who knew she would be in the cafeteria?”
Daniel gave her a look.
“That is the right question.”
The answer came from an unexpected place.
Natalyia Moretti arrived at noon carrying two paper bags and enough attitude to make the security desk surrender without a fight.
She walked into Aleandro's office, put one bag in front of Clare, one in front of her brother, and said, “Neither of you has eaten.”
Aleandro stared at her.
“How did you get past Daniel?”
“I raised you. Daniel respects hierarchy.”
“You are younger than me.”
“Emotionally, I am your grandmother.”
Clare laughed for the first time all morning.
Natalyia looked at her.
“Good. You still have a sense of humor. That means he has not completely ruined your week.”
“Natalyia.”
“What?”
Aleandro looked toward the door.
“You should not be here.”
She became serious.
“I heard about the threats.”
“From whom?”
“Your chief of staff has a mother. His mother plays cards with my aunt.”
Aleandro closed his eyes.
Clare whispered, “Your information security is fascinating.”
“It is a family disease.”
Natalyia opened the lunch bag.
“Eat.”
Clare obeyed.
Ten minutes later, while Aleandro took a call, Natalyia sat in the chair beside Clare.
“Rebecca Sloan,” she said quietly.
Clare looked at her.
“What about her?”
“I met her at the foundation luncheon last month.”
Clare waited.
“She spent twenty minutes trying to convince me that payroll needed more executive visibility.”
“That sounds normal.”
“It did. Until she asked whether Aleandro was planning to reorganize financial operations under her department.”
Clare frowned.
“Financial operations? Ethan's team?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she want that?”
Natalyia shrugged.
“Control. Promotion. Access. Pick a corporate sin.”
Clare thought about it.
Rebecca handled employee data.
Financial operations handled vendor flows.
Combined, they could see both sides of payments labeled as workforce services.
“Did she say anything else?”
“She said the current structure created ‘unnecessary separation between people data and cash movement.’ I remember because it sounded like the least romantic sentence ever spoken at a charity luncheon.”
Clare stood so quickly her chair rolled backward.
Aleandro ended his call.
“What?”
“Northshore.”
He watched her.
“The fraud worked because workforce data and vendor payments were separated. Payroll saw no employees. Finance saw approved invoices. Each department assumed the missing half existed somewhere else.”
Natalyia stopped chewing.
Clare continued.
“If Rebecca had control of both systems, she could create the missing half when auditors asked.”
Aleandro's expression hardened.
“Or destroy it.”
“Exactly.”
Miriam was called.
Forensic investigators began reconstructing old organizational requests from Rebecca's department.
At 2:17, they found three proposals.
All written by Rebecca Sloan.
All recommending that employee payment administration and certain vendor workforce accounts be centralized under her authority.
All rejected.
The most recent proposal had been submitted four days before Peter Harris was terminated.
Clare stared at the date.
“Why would she push for this right before Peter was blamed?”
Miriam answered carefully.
“Because she wanted legitimate authority over records she may already have been manipulating.”
“Or because she discovered the problem and wanted control to fix it,” Clare said.
Aleandro looked at her.
“You are still giving her alternatives.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody photographed us from the hallway. Somebody used Rebecca's office while she was not there. Somebody put evidence under Ethan's credentials. Whoever is doing this wants us to pick a villain quickly.”
Aleandro leaned back.
“And you think that is the trap.”
“I think the person who framed Peter Harris once is perfectly capable of framing someone twice.”
At 3:04, a message arrived from the forensic team.
They had found a hidden access pattern.
The Northshore vendor records had been opened repeatedly over four years from one executive terminal.
Not Marcus Vale's.
Not Rebecca Sloan's.
The terminal belonged to Arthur Wynn.
Chief Financial Officer.
Clare read the name twice.
Arthur had been in the conference room the morning she returned the bracelet.
He had been one of the executives who watched her correct Aleandro.
He had also been present when the company reopened the old audit.
Aleandro's face became stone.
“Arthur signed the external audit response.”
Miriam nodded.
“He would have had visibility into every Northshore payment.”
Daniel entered a second later.
“Mr. Russo.”
Something in his tone made everyone turn.
“We located the source of the unknown text messages.”
“Who?” Clare asked.
Daniel looked at her.
“Not a person. A company device routed through a masking service.”
“Which device?”
“A phone assigned to the CFO's office.”
Clare felt the pieces move.
Arthur Wynn.
Quiet.
Respected.
Always present.
Never discussed.
Aleandro reached for his phone.
Clare said, “Wait.”
He looked at her.
“We still don't know who physically had the device.”
Daniel nodded.
“She is right.”
Aleandro lowered the phone slowly.
Then the office door opened.
Arthur Wynn stood there.
No one had called him.
He looked at the gathered faces.
Then at the report on Aleandro's desk.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Arthur smiled faintly.
“I assume this is about Northshore.”
Clare's pulse kicked.
Aleandro's voice was quiet.
“How do you know that?”
Arthur's smile disappeared.
“Because I am the one who approved the first payment.”
Silence.
May you like
Then he added:
“And if you think Marcus Vale is the man stealing from you, you are about six years too late.”
