Chapter 6 - The Audit Unveiled
The rainy night ended with Patricia and Javier leaving in silence, their grand illusions of dominance shattered on my foyer floor.
Fernanda stayed.
For the first time in three years, my daughter sat at my kitchen table, drinking tea from an old porcelain mug Ernest had bought her when she was twelve years old. Her face was pale, her eyes bloodshot, her high-society demeanor completely stripped away.
"I didn't know, Mom," Fernanda whispered, staring down at her reflections in the dark tea. "I swear to God, I didn't know about the company... or Dad's debts... or what you sacrificed."
"You didn't know because you never asked, Fernanda," I said gently, sitting across from her. "When you married Javier, you fell in love with a lifestyle. You thought that being accepted by his family meant you had achieved something. You forgot where you came from."
"Javier's mother..." Fernanda swallowed hard, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "Paty called me this morning before we came here. She didn't ask how I was doing. She told me that if Javier lost his job at Vanguard, she would make sure he divorced me and found a woman from a 'proper family.'"
I shook my head slowly. "Greedy people only love you as long as you are useful to their appetite, Fernanda. The moment the food runs out, they eat you instead."
"What happens now, Mom?" she asked, looking up at me like a lost child. "Javier's audit... is he going to lose his job?"
I looked at my daughter solemnly.
"That depends entirely on what my audit team finds in his department, Fernanda," I said. "If Javier has been honest in his work, he will suffer nothing more than a bruised ego and a hard lesson in humility. But if he has been cutting corners..."
I didn't need to finish the sentence.
The audit of Vanguard Commercial began forty-eight hours later.
My team from Eleanor Holdings—led by a brilliant forty-year-old senior forensic accountant named David Chen—spent four days inside Javier’s department on Lavaca Street.
On Friday afternoon, David Chen arrived at my home office carrying a thick, red-bound report.
I sat behind my mahogany desk, wearing my reading glasses, as David opened the file.
"Teresa," David said, his expression serious. "We completed the review of Javier Gomez’s compliance tracking records for the last twenty-four months."
"And?" I asked.
"It's bad," David revealed. "Javier wasn't just using your compliance software at a discounted rate. He was falsifying quarterly asset risk assessments for three major commercial land developers in West Texas—developers who happen to be personal business partners of his mother's family."
My jaw tightened. "He was altering risk scores to secure unearned loan guarantees?"
"Yes," David confirmed. "He bypassed the core safety protocols in your software by manually overriding the algorithm's flag system. He created over eight million dollars in artificial credit equity for his friends."
I closed my eyes for a brief moment, letting out a slow, steady breath.
Javier hadn't just been arrogant; he had been corrupt. He had used my software—my life's work—to run an illicit favor network for his mother's social circle.
"Does Richard Sterling know?" I asked, opening my eyes.
"Not yet," David replied. "The findings are currently sealed under Eleanor Holdings' audit protocol. It is up to you whether we submit this report to Vanguard's board of directors or directly to the Texas Department of Banking."
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I picked up my Montblanc pen, tapping it gently against the mahogany desk.
"Call Richard Sterling," I instructed David. "Tell him I am calling an emergency executive board meeting for Monday morning at eight o'clock. And tell him Javier Gomez must be present."
