Avery's POV

Mom's outside lawyer kept the package in a bank vault. Of course she did. By this point, I would have been disappointed if the truth had been sitting in an unlocked desk drawer. The lawyer's office verified Dad first.

Then me.

Government ID.

Avery's POV

The Sterling ledger was not one book. It was a system.

Accounts.

Approvals.

Vendor codes.

Archived emails.

Internal routing notes.

Exactly the kind of thing Richard had spent years trusting nobody outside his circle to understand. Now

Avery's POV

The deletions started at 6:04 P.M. By 6:11, the forensic team had counted forty-three. By 6:19, someone had tried to wipe an entire folder from Richard's executive archive. And by 6:27, nobody in the room was pretending it was an accident. My a