Chapter 11 - THE ADMINISTRATOR
Paul expanded the technical review.
Rebecca’s fingerprints were everywhere.
Not criminal fingerprints.
Administrative ones.
Password resets.
Account provisioning.
Deleted folders.
Vendor approvals.
System overrides.
Individually, many could be explained by her CFO role.
Together, the timing became difficult.
Every major MRC payment followed one of two events.
I traveled.
Or Rachel asked questions.
Sometimes both.
Then Paul found the unauthorized profile created for Margaret.
It had been named MC-REVIEW.
The profile was assigned only one function.
Approve supporting documents for vendor payments.
Rebecca created it.
Margaret used it from an IP address registered to her home.
That answered one question.
My mother really had been participating directly in the financial process.
She was not merely protecting Rebecca.
She was inside the system.
But why?
Paul traced the first MRC invoice.
It appeared six weeks after my father, Thomas Carter, became seriously ill.
Margaret had access to his personal financial paperwork during treatment.
Rebecca was already running most company operations.
I had focused on sales and clients.
After my father died, I became managing partner in title.
Rebecca controlled the machinery underneath me.
A structure built for convenience became the perfect environment for abuse.
Then came a surprise.
MRC was not the only questionable vendor.
Two others existed.
Smaller.
Different names.
Same post-office forwarding service.
Same bank routing branch.
Same document template.
My stomach dropped.
“How much?”
Paul added the numbers.
“Potentially another hundred and eighty thousand.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
This was larger than she knew.
I asked whether the money went to Margaret and Rebecca.
“We cannot say that yet.”
“What can we say?”
“That Carter Supply paid entities with significant common indicators and questionable supporting work.”
Precise.
Annoyingly precise.
Useful.
Then Jenna asked to speak with me privately.
She had worked for us for two years.
She looked terrified.
“I should have told you something.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“The week Rachel left, Rebecca came here at night.”
“When?”
“The night before.”
“Why?”
“She said she forgot her laptop.”
“Did she take anything?”
Jenna nodded.
“Rachel’s old phone.”
The room went quiet.
“What old phone?”
“The one from the kitchen drawer.”
Rachel stared at her.
“You saw that?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Rebecca told me you asked her to take it.”
Rachel looked at me.
I shook my head.
I had never asked.
Jenna began crying.
“I thought it was company property.”
Maybe technically it had been.
But the SIM inside it had generated the threats attributed to Rachel.
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And now we had a witness who saw Rebecca remove the physical device one day before those messages appeared.
📖 Jenna placed Rachel’s old phone in Rebecca’s hands immediately before the fake threats began, giving the manipulated messages a physical chain for the first time. 👇
