Chapter 10 Richard Dossier
Three floors above the Voss Global executive suite, Richard Voss sat in an office that felt nothing like Reyes’s.
It was colder.
Not physically.
The temperature was comfortable enough.
It was the atmosphere.
Everything in the room had a purpose.
There were no family photographs on the walls.
No personal souvenirs.
No awards displayed for visitors to admire.
No books that hadn’t been chosen for a reason.
Even the furniture looked like it had been selected because it was useful rather than beautiful.
Richard preferred it that way.
He didn’t like distractions.
He didn’t like sentiment.
And he especially didn’t like surprises.
On his desk was the first draft of a file.
Alex Tailor’s name wasn’t on the cover yet.
It didn’t need to be.
Everyone in the room knew exactly whose life they were about to pull apart.
Richard opened the folder.
There were already several pages inside.
Employment history.
Addresses.
Known associates.
Basic financial information.
It was only the beginning.
“Everything,” Richard said.
Two people sat across from him.
One was Fiona, a sharp-eyed research associate who had worked for him long enough to know better than to ask unnecessary questions.
She had a notebook open on her lap and a laptop beside her.
The other was a man Richard had hired through channels careful enough to keep his name off the company payroll.
He didn’t introduce himself.
He didn’t need to.
Richard preferred people who understood that silence was sometimes more valuable than conversation.
“Employment history,” Richard continued.
He turned a page.
“Every coworker who’ll talk. Former supervisors. Anyone who knows him well enough to have an opinion.”
Fiona wrote it down.
“Financial records.”
She nodded.
“I want every debt,” Richard said. “Every late payment. Every overdraft in the last ten years.”
Fiona glanced at him.
“Ten years?”
“Yes.”
She continued writing.
“Credit cards. Loans. Rent history. Utility payments. Anything that tells us how he lived before this.”
Richard closed the folder.
“People become very different when they suddenly have money.”
The unnamed man leaned back slightly.
“You think he’ll change?”
“I don’t know.”
Richard looked at him.
“That’s why we’re investigating.”
He turned back to Fiona.
“Family.”
She paused.
Richard’s expression hardened.
“I understand his mother is dead.”
He said the words without emotion.
“Find out exactly how she died.”
Fiona looked up.
Richard continued.
“What hospital treated her. What it cost. What debts were left behind. Who paid what. Whether Alex paid anything himself.”
Fiona hesitated.
“That’s a lot of digging for a warehouse worker.”
Richard’s expression didn’t change.
“He’s not a warehouse worker anymore.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“He’s the largest shareholder in a company I’ve spent fifteen years building a career inside.”
His voice remained calm.
“I intend to know everything about him before the board does.”
Fiona lowered her eyes.
Richard continued.
“And long before the press does.”
The unnamed man shifted in his seat.
“Why?”
Richard looked at him.
“Because whatever we find, someone else will eventually find it too.”
He stood and walked toward the window.
The city stretched beneath him.
From this height, people were little more than moving dots.
Cars looked like toys.
Buildings seemed smaller than they really were.
Richard had always liked looking at the city from above.
It reminded him that perspective mattered.
A problem that looked enormous from the ground could become very small when viewed from far enough away.
“I’d rather control when and how that happens than leave it to chance.”
He looked over his shoulder.
“Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Richard turned back toward the window.
“What do we know about his life before Julian?”
Fiona checked her notes.
“Not much yet. We have his employment records and some public information. He appears to have lived a fairly ordinary life.”
“Ordinary isn’t useful.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then dig deeper.”
She nodded.
The unnamed man cleared his throat.
“There’s also the matter of his coworkers.”
Richard looked at him.
“One in particular.”
“Priya Anand.”
The name caught Richard’s attention.
“What about her?”
“She worked alongside him for almost six years. They’re close. She was one of the first people he called after the will was read.”
“How close?”
“We’re still determining that.”
Richard’s eyes narrowed.
“Find out.”
The man nodded.
“Watch her.”
Fiona stopped writing.
Richard noticed.
“Not aggressively.”
The unnamed man nodded again.
“Of course.”
Richard’s gaze hardened.
“Not yet.”
He returned to his desk.
“I want to know who she talks to.”
He sat.
“Who talks to her.”
He opened the file again.
“Who she trusts.”
He paused.
“And who she tells things to.”
The man made a note.
“Nothing more?”
“Nothing that will make her notice.”
Richard looked at him.
“If she realizes she’s being watched, you’ve already failed.”
Understood.
Richard turned to Fiona.
“What about his former employer?”
“Ruiz?”
“Yes.”
“He’s the warehouse supervisor.”
“Find out what he knows.”
“About Alex?”
“About everything.”
Richard tapped the desk.
“What was he like at work? Did he have disciplinary issues? Arguments? Financial problems? Anyone who disliked him?”
Fiona nodded.
“And if he has nothing?”
“Everyone has something.”
Richard said it without hesitation.
Fiona looked at him for a moment.
Then returned to her notes.
“And Vaughn Ellery?” she asked.
Richard looked up.
“He’s freelance, but he’s good.”
“How good?”
“He worked the Castellano family scandal two years ago.”
Richard’s expression remained unreadable.
“He got access nobody else could.”
“Bring him in.”
Fiona hesitated.
“You want him investigating Alex?”
“I want him building a public angle at the same time.”
Fiona closed her notebook slightly.
“Accusations?”
“Not yet.”
Richard walked toward the window again.
“Questions.”
“Questions?”
“Yes.”
He looked out over the city.
“The public doesn’t need proof to become interested.”
He paused.
“They need a reason to ask.”
Fiona understood.
Richard continued.
“The right questions, asked by the right people, can do more damage than an accusation.”
The room stayed silent.
Outside, traffic moved through the streets.
People went to work.
People went home.
People made plans.
None of them knew that in a quiet office several floors above the city, a man was preparing to turn someone else’s past into ammunition.
Richard stared through the glass.
“My uncle built this company from nothing.”
His voice was quieter now.
“I’ve given fifteen years of my life to it.”
He turned back.
“And I’m not going to watch it get handed to a man who can’t tell a balance sheet from a grocery receipt.”
Fiona said nothing.
Richard walked back to his desk.
There was something beneath his calm now.
Anger.
Not the loud kind.
The dangerous kind.
The kind that had been sitting quietly for years.
He had watched Julian make decisions without explaining them.
He had watched Richard’s own influence inside the company grow and shrink depending on his uncle’s mood.
He had accepted it.
For fifteen years, he had accepted it.
Because one day, he had believed, the company would finally be his to shape.
Then Julian had died.
And instead of leaving the future to the people who had spent decades protecting the company, he had chosen a stranger.
A warehouse worker.
A man whose name had barely existed in their world twenty-four hours earlier.
Richard couldn’t understand it.
And what he couldn’t understand, he didn’t trust.
“All because Julian decided to grow sentimental in his final year.”
His voice was low.
Fiona looked at him.
“You think this was sentimental?”
Richard stared at the file.
“I think Julian stopped making sense.”
He picked up the folder.
“And when powerful people stop making sense, someone usually pays for it.”
The unnamed man leaned forward.
“What do you want us to do if we find something serious?”
Richard looked at him.
“Bring it to me first.”
“And then?”
Richard’s expression was cold.
“We decide what it means.”
The man nodded.
Fiona closed her notebook.
“Anything else?”
Richard looked at both of them.
“Yes.”
He placed the folder on the desk.
“I don’t want Alex Tailor frightened.”
Fiona frowned slightly.
Richard continued.
“Not yet.”
He leaned back.
“If he thinks someone is coming after him, he’ll become careful.”
His eyes hardened.
“Careful people are harder to investigate.”
He looked at the unnamed man.
“Let him believe he’s safe.”
A silence followed.
Richard’s gaze moved to the folder again.
Alex Tailor.
A stranger.
An heir.
A problem.
“Find me something.”
No one answered immediately.
Richard looked at each of them.
“There’s always something.”
He picked up the file.
“There always is.”
The meeting ended.
Fiona left first.
The unnamed man followed.
The door closed behind them.
Richard remained alone.
For several seconds, he stared at the empty chairs across from him.
Then he looked toward the city again.
Somewhere outside those windows, Alex Tailor was probably beginning to understand what his new life looked like.
The money.
The house.
The engagement.
The attention.
Richard almost smiled.
Let him enjoy it.
Because money could buy almost anything.
It could buy comfort.
Security.
Influence.
It could even buy people willing to defend you.
But it couldn’t erase the past.
And Richard intended to find Alex’s.
