Chapter 8 - THE NAME ABOVE JULIAN
Adrian's ledger named shell companies, weapons invoices, and private security transfers.
Julian approved many of them.
But each approval traced upward to a code.
C.V.
My first thought was my mother.
Celeste Vale.
Mara thought the same thing.
Celeste saw it on our faces.
"No."
"Those are your initials," I said.
"So were your father's."
Charles Vale.
He had been dead six years.
Rebecca searched old corporate authorizations.
C.V. had been a master approval code created for my father.
After his death, it should have been disabled.
It wasn't.
Someone had continued using it.
Grant checked system access history.
The code was used from inside Vale House thirty-eight times after my father's funeral.
Always late at night.
Always from the executive library.
The same library my mother used every evening.
I looked at her.
She looked wounded.
"You think I killed my own son?"
"I don't know what to think."
She slapped me.
The room went silent.
"Then start with that," she said. "I buried Adrian. I will not let you make grief into evidence."
She was right about one thing.
Suspicion was not proof.
Grant ran the access logs again.
Then he noticed a technical detail.
The C.V. approvals originated from my father's smart card.
A physical card.
It had been buried with him.
At least officially.
Mara looked at me.
"Was the casket ever opened after the funeral?"
"Not that I know of."
Celeste whispered, "There was a problem with the family crypt two months later. Water damage."
"Who supervised repairs?"
She closed her eyes.
"Julian."
We searched the crypt records.
One maintenance worker remembered the casket being moved.
Another remembered a young man entering alone.
They could not identify him.
Then Elena appeared at the library door.
"Mr. Vale, someone left this in Noah's room."
A black envelope.
Inside was my father's smart card.
And a note.
May you like
YOU KEEP LOOKING AT JULIAN.
LOOK AT THE MAN WHO NEVER LEFT YOUR SIDE.
