Chapter 4 - The Audit Begins
The extended-stay suite in Mission Valley smelled of industrial disinfectant and lavender, but to me, it smelled like freedom.
It was six-thirty on Monday morning. I had spent Sunday evening changing the passwords to every single bank account, credit card, and investment portal I owned. I set up two-factor authentication linked strictly to a brand-new burner phone number, notified my bank of potential unauthorized access, and flagged my credit profile with all three major bureaus.
When you’re an auditor, you don’t wait for the fire to reach the living room; you shut off the gas line at the street.
My laptop was open on the laminate desk. Spread out before me were dozens of scanned vendor files from Pacific Coast Supply.
For the past four months, Brandon had been boasting about his sales numbers at his electrical equipment firm, Apex Industrial. What he hadn't realized was that Pacific Coast Supply—my employer—frequently acted as a secondary distributor for Apex’s commercial wiring contracts.
Two weeks before the wedding, Brandon had asked me a casual question over dinner: *“Hey Char, if a regional supplier processes an equipment return through a local retail entity to write off the freight depreciation, does your system automatically flag the parent company’s tax ID?”*
At the time, I had brushed it off as work talk. But sitting in that quiet hotel room, the puzzle pieces began to slide into place with terrifying precision.
Rosalind owned *Vance Home & Hearth*, an appliance and fixtures showroom downtown that had been bleeding money for three quarters. Brandon was the regional sales director for *Apex Industrial*.
I logged into the public records registry for the county of San Diego.
It took me forty-five minutes of digging through corporate filings to find what I was looking for.
Three months ago, Brandon had registered a secondary shell entity called *BV Logistics LLC*. The registered business address wasn't an office building. It was Rosalind’s private residence in Clairemont.
My phone rang. The screen displayed Walter Reed’s name.
My pulse jumped, but I took a breath and answered. “Charlotte Ruiz.”
“Charlotte. It’s Walter Reed,” the deep voice came through the line, calm and measured. “I apologize for calling you directly on your personal cell, but I obtained your number from my wife. Evelyn insisted I reach out.”
“Good morning, Mr. Reed. You don't need to apologize.”
“First of all,” Walter said, pausing slightly, “I want to apologize for the scene at that house on Saturday. Evelyn and I were appalled. In my thirty years of corporate leadership, I’ve seen men attempt many underhanded things, but the utter lack of character your husband displayed in that kitchen was… remarkable.”
“Thank you, Mr. Reed. That means a great deal.”
“I’m calling you as a courtesy before nine o'clock,” Walter continued. “Brandon was summoned to my office thirty minutes ago. He is no longer being considered for the regional directorship. In fact, following a brief review of his recent division expenses and vendor credits this morning, I have placed him on indefinite administrative suspension pending an internal audit.”
My breath hitched. “An audit?”
“We found several discrepancies in his quarterly equipment transfers,” Walter said, his tone turning sharply professional. “Several large shipments of high-end commercial HVAC units and industrial wiring were written off as ‘damaged in transit’ over the last ninety days. Curiously, those same model numbers appeared in private stock listings for a local retail outfit in the city.”
*Rosalind’s showroom.*
Brandon wasn't just covering Hannah’s credit cards. He was diverting written-off corporate inventory from Apex Industrial into his mother’s struggling appliance business, allowing her to sell high-grade commercial equipment at pure profit to keep her doors open.
“Charlotte? Are you there?” Walter asked.
May you like
“I’m here, Mr. Reed,” I said, looking at the spreadsheet glowing on my laptop screen. “And I think you should know… you’re only looking at the surface of the ledger.”
***
