The room glowed beneath hundreds of candles.
Guests turned as she passed.
Some admired her.
Others whispered.
Grace ignored them.
She approached the main table.
Vivian looked up sharply.
“Grace.
Your table is over there.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you standing here?”
Grace glanced at the empty place beside her husband.
“Because I’m waiting for Jae-min.”
Nolan gave a small laugh.
“Grace, please don’t make a scene.”
She turned toward him.
“I’m not.”
“Then take your assigned seat.”
Before she could respond, a familiar voice sounded behind her.
“Which seat?”
Jae-min stood at the entrance in a perfectly tailored black suit.
Seo-jun Lee, his head of security, waited several steps behind him.
The room grew quieter.
Vivian rose.
“Jae-min.
We were just explaining the arrangements.”
He looked at Grace.
Then at the seating chart.
Then at Aunt Helen, sitting comfortably beside his place.
“Get up,” he said.
Helen blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re sitting in my wife’s chair.”
The guests at the nearest tables stopped talking.
Helen glanced at Vivian.
“Jae-min, there’s no need—”
“Get up.”
His voice wasn’t loud.
It didn’t need to be.
Helen rose, her cheeks burning.
Jae-min pulled out the chair for Grace.
She looked at him, startled.
“Please,” he said.
She sat.
He took the place beside her.
Then he looked at his family.
“If my wife is not welcome at a table, neither am I.”
Nobody laughed.
Nobody even coughed.
Vivian stared at her plate.
Across the room, Eric exchanged a nervous glance with Nolan.
The evening continued, but the atmosphere had changed.
At nine, Nolan stood to give a speech.
He thanked the investors.
Praised the company’s growth.
Spoke warmly about the Kang family’s extraordinary legacy.
Then he raised a champagne glass.
“And tonight,” he announced, “we celebrate a new era of leadership.”
Jae-min looked up.
Something in Nolan’s tone was wrong.
Nolan smiled.
“Of course, transparency matters enormously to our organization.
Which is why some recent discoveries require attention.”
The screens behind the stage changed.
A spreadsheet appeared.
Grace’s name was printed at the top.
Beneath it was an authorization for an eighteen-million-dollar foundation transfer.
The beneficiary was a private account in Boston.
Nolan faced the guests.
“Unfortunately, our internal review has identified serious irregularities involving someone very close to the leadership of this company.”
Grace went cold.
Jae-min didn’t move.
Nolan continued.
“We believe funds intended for charitable purposes may have been diverted without board authorization.”
Murmurs spread.
Vivian lowered her eyes with practiced sorrow.
Aunt Helen pressed a hand to her chest.
Eric shook his head as though personally wounded.
Grace stared at the screen.
The transaction was fabricated.
She recognized the format immediately.
It had been copied from a legitimate grant authorization.
But the routing number had been changed, the approval time altered, and her digital signature inserted.
Nolan looked directly at her.
“Grace, perhaps you’d like to explain.”
The ballroom became silent.
Jae-min reached for his glass.
Grace touched his arm.
“Let me.”
He looked at her.
She rose.
Two hundred people watched.
For a moment, her heart hammered so violently that she wondered whether anyone could see the silk moving against her chest.
Then she approached the stage.
Nolan stepped aside with an unpleasant smile.
Grace studied the projected document.
“May I ask who prepared this evidence?”
Nolan folded his arms.
“Our internal compliance team.”
“Which one?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Interesting.”
She pointed at the screen.
“Would you enlarge the authorization timestamp?”
The technician obeyed.
10:42 p.m.
Grace nodded.
“Thank you.
Now, could you enlarge the approval code?”
A string of numbers appeared.
She turned toward the audience.
“This transaction supposedly occurred on May seventeenth.
But the authorization code belongs to a compliance system we implemented on June first.”
Silence.
Grace continued.
“Which means whoever created this document used a system that didn’t exist when the transaction supposedly occurred.”
Nolan’s smile faded.
She turned another page.
“Furthermore, the destination account is listed as being in Boston.
But its routing number belongs to a commercial bank in the Cayman Islands.”
Someone gasped.
Grace looked at Nolan.
“Would your compliance team care to explain that?”
He flushed.
“This is ridiculous.”
“I agree.”
She reached into her evening bag.
Grace removed a small drive.
“I brought the original records.”
Jae-min watched her from the table.
He had never loved her more fiercely.
She faced the guests.
“I have spent six weeks investigating transfers involving Meridian Foundation.
I discovered that more than thirty million dollars intended for former employees and charitable beneficiaries had been moved through unauthorized accounts.”
Vivian’s glass stopped halfway to her lips.
Grace continued.
“I reported those findings through the proper internal channels.
This evening, someone has attempted to discredit me using a forged transaction.”
Nolan stepped toward her.
“That’s enough.”
Grace turned.
“No, Nolan.
It isn’t.”
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