Chapter 64: The Recorded Conversation

The recording began in the middle of a conversation. Chairs moved somewhere near the microphone, followed by Freya's father's voice. Hearing it affected her more strongly than she expected. The voice belonged to a stranger to her soul and a father to every memory inside her body.

"The invoices don't match the actual work," he said. "I've checked them twice."

Victor answered calmly. "Then check them a third time."

"This isn't an accounting mistake."

There was a pause.

Victor's tone changed slightly. "You're making accusations that could damage several people."

"I'm asking where the money went."

Louis sat motionless beside Freya while Derek took notes.

The conversation continued for nearly twelve minutes. Freya's father accused unnamed partners of using inflated construction contracts to move funds through legitimate developments. Victor never directly admitted involvement, but he repeatedly urged him to stop investigating.

Then came the most important exchange.

"Charles Stone already knows enough to ask questions," Freya's father said.

Victor replied, "Charles sees conspiracies everywhere when his family is involved."

"He saw the same numbers I did."

"Then both of you should forget them."

The recording ended shortly afterward.

Freya stared at the computer.

Louis's grandfather Charles had apparently been working with her father years before either Freya or Louis knew anything about the matter.

Derek replayed one section. "Victor never confesses, but this is enough to prove there was an old dispute."

"Not enough to connect him to the recent leaks," Louis said.

Freya agreed. "But it gives him history and motive to control Stonebridge after my parents died."

Derek's search for Martin Vale produced another surprise. The attorney had retired several years earlier and moved to a coastal town. Public records showed he was still alive.

"We can contact him," Derek said.

Louis shook his head. "Not yet. If Victor is watching anyone connected to this, approaching Vale could alert him."

Freya looked at the other five encrypted files. They contained transaction records her father had apparently preserved separately from the ordinary company accounts. Several payments flowed through contractors that no longer existed.

One company name appeared repeatedly: Meridian Advisory.

Louis recognized it.

"Victor used Meridian years later," he said. "One of the payments connected to my leaked information passed through a company that received money from Meridian."

The room went quiet.

For the first time, the old property dispute and Louis's recent collapse were connected by more than Victor's name.

Freya closed the audio player. "So this didn't begin with Ethan."

"No," Louis said. "Probably not."

The original novel had portrayed Louis's downfall as the consequence of business rivalry and the female lead's intelligence. Freya now understood how incomplete that explanation had been. Ethan and Serena might have delivered the final blows, but someone else had spent years preparing weaknesses inside Louis's world.

She looked at Louis. "What happens now?"

His expression was calm, but his eyes were cold.

"Now we find out what Victor was protecting all those years ago—and why he needed Stone Holdings to fall."

They copied the recovered files onto two encrypted drives and locked the original away. Freya insisted on keeping one backup somewhere Victor could never connect to Louis. Derek agreed to arrange it. By midnight, the apartment looked ordinary again, but nothing felt ordinary. A mystery buried for more than a decade had just become part of their present.

Neither of them wanted to rush the next step. They had learned enough to know that every answer could expose another hidden connection. For now, preserving the evidence and keeping Victor unaware of what they had discovered mattered more than forcing an immediate confrontation.