Chapter 2 - THE MONOLITH AND THE MEMORY
The heavy walnut doors of the study clicked shut, sealing Nathaniel inside a world of leather, mahogany, and silence. Outside, the muffled sounds of catering staff cleaning up the dining room faded into nothingness.
Nathaniel walked behind his massive executive desk, but he didn’t sit down. Instead, he leaned his hands on the polished surface, looking at the framed photograph sitting right beside his multi-monitor setup.
In the photograph, a young woman with soft brown curls and laughing hazel eyes was sitting on a blanket in a sunlit park, leaning against Nathaniel’s shoulder. Clara.
When Clara was alive, the house had been filled with music, messy art projects, and unscripted laughter. Nathaniel had been ambitious then, yes, but Clara had been his anchor. She was the one who could pull him away from ninety-hour work weeks with a single look.
When a sudden birth complication took her life ten months ago, Nathaniel didn’t weep in front of anyone. He didn’t take time off. Instead, he built a wall around his grief—a wall made of quarterly earnings reports, global acquisitions, and relentless corporate warfare. He became a ghost inhabiting a empire, managing CrossAtlas with ruthless efficiency, convincing himself that if he kept moving, the pain couldn't catch him.
A soft knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” Nathaniel said, his voice instantly regaining its impenetrable edge.
Rosa entered, carrying a small silver tray with a cup of black coffee and a damp cloth. She set the coffee on the desk and picked up the broken piece of crystal Nathaniel had carried in his pocket earlier without realizing it.
“She looks more like Clara every day,” Rosa said quietly, not looking up as she cleaned the desk.
Nathaniel didn’t answer right away. He adjusted his cuff links. “She has Clara’s eyes. But tonight... people said she looked like me.”
“She imitates you because she’s searching for you, Mr. Cross,” Rosa said gently, stepping toward the door. “A child doesn't care about market shares. She just wants to see her father’s face.”
Before Nathaniel could respond, his phone chimed again. An encrypted email notification flashed across his monitor.
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: UNAUTHORIZED CAPITAL DIVERSION - PROJECT AVALON
Nathaniel’s eyes sharpened. Project Avalon was the firm’s flagship renewable energy venture in Northern Europe—a ten-billion-dollar initiative that was supposed to secure CrossAtlas’s legacy for the next decade.
He opened the attachment. Pages of forensic accounting data scrolled past. Over forty million dollars had been silently siphoned through shell companies based in the Cayman Islands over the last six months. And the digital signatures authorizing the transfers belonged to his closest confidants on the board.
Someone inside his inner circle was trying to destroy him.
Nathaniel shut his eyes briefly. The light, joyful feeling that had touched his heart in the dining room just twenty minutes ago was completely erased, replaced by the familiar, ice-cold adrenaline of corporate warfare.
He picked up the phone and dialed Evelyn Park’s private line.
“Evelyn,” he said as soon as she answered. “Cancel my morning meetings tomorrow. Get the forensic team to the penthouse by 5:00 AM.”
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“Nathaniel? What happened?”
“We have a traitor on the board.”
