PART 2 - FOUR YEARS OF INVOICES REVEAL A FORGED SIGNATURE AND BETRAYAL

Mason’s voice turned dangerously calm.

“Bring me every invoice from the last four years.”

Brandon’s face lost its color.

Within an hour, the hotel’s financial director arrived with boxes of records. Mason locked the conference room and began comparing invoices against supplier deliveries.

The numbers told an ugly story.

Premium beef had been billed while cheaper cuts entered the kitchen. Imported cheese existed only on paper. Organic produce had been charged at luxury prices, yet ordinary vegetables filled the refrigerators.

More than $600,000 had disappeared through inflated food purchases.

But Mason noticed something stranger.

Almost every suspicious invoice carried Brandon’s approval—and a second signature belonging to Victor Hale, the hotel’s general manager.

“Where is Hale?” Mason demanded.

“On vacation,” someone answered.

Mason immediately called him.

No answer.

Then Lily quietly touched his arm.

“My mom kept copies.”

Mason stared at her.

“Copies of what?”

“She said if something happened to her, Grandma should never throw

away the blue folder.”

Twenty minutes later, Mason drove Lily to her grandmother’s small house in Southtown.

Inside a kitchen drawer, Lily’s grandmother found the folder.

There were photographs of cheap ingredients, copies of invoices, handwritten dates, and Joanne’s original letter addressed personally to Mason.

The envelope had never been opened.

Someone had intercepted it.

But underneath the letter was something even worse.

A disciplinary report accused Joanne of stealing $2,400 worth of imported ingredients.

Mason examined the signature authorizing her dismissal.

It appeared to be his.

“I never signed this.”

Lily’s grandmother suddenly began crying.

“That accusation destroyed her,” she whispered. “Joanne couldn’t find another kitchen job. She worked nights cleaning offices. She barely slept.”

Then she revealed what happened the night Joanne suffered her stroke.

“She wasn’t coming home from work.”

Mason looked up.

“She was going to meet someone.”

“Who?”

Before the grandmother could answer, Lily pulled

an old phone from the blue folder.

“My mom recorded everything.”

Mason turned it on.

One audio file remained.

The date was the night Joanne collapsed.

He pressed play.

A man’s voice filled the room.

Mason recognized it instantly.

It wasn’t Brandon.

It wasn’t Victor Hale.

It belonged to someone Mason trusted with his entire company.

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