risk, negotiated with difficult vendors, and told the chief executive unpleasant truths other people were afraid to say. She had watched Sterling Living grow from a regional company into an international name, and she felt that her judgment had helped protect it. Now she believed that an unfamiliar man with a workshop was quietly undoing the defenses she had worked so hard to build.
Her colleagues disagreed, though few were willing to argue with her directly. Ethan thought Victoria looked healthier and was making more thoughtful decisions. Several plant supervisors had noticed that complaints were being answered faster and meetings involved the workers affected by changes. Even the company's general counsel, Miriam Cole, saw no obvious conflict in Victoria having a friendship outside the business. When Linda mentioned that Daniel had refused a reward, Miriam replied that refusing money was not evidence of fraud. Linda left the conversation feeling more isolated than reassured.
She had reasons for distrusting people that went back long before Sterling Living. Her father had operated a small contracting company and lost it after a partner diverted client payments into a private account. Linda had been sixteen when the family had to sell their home. She remembered her mother's careful packing, the bank notices stacked beside the telephone, and her father's humiliation at having trusted someone who looked him in the eye while stealing from him. She had sworn that she would never be caught so unprepared.
The promise made her good at certain parts of her work. It also made her mistake the absence of suspicion for the absence of intelligence. Whenever Victoria spoke about Daniel's quiet workshop, Linda pictured an elaborate fraud hidden beneath patience. She began collecting details from conversations in which no one had intended to provide evidence.
Daniel worked from home, did occasional repairs without payment, and had no public reputation that would explain why a CEO kept visiting him. To Linda, those facts did not demonstrate a modest man living according to his preferences. They suggested someone deliberately difficult to investigate.
The plan she developed was both simple and deeply misguided. She would place a second wallet within Daniel's reach, this one filled with more money than he could reasonably earn in a year. If he kept it, Linda believed, she could show Victoria that his principles had merely been waiting for a higher price. If he returned it, she expected to find something questionable in the way he handled it. She described the idea to herself as a security exercise and refused to examine why legitimate security staff would never approve it.