Backstage

The applause hit like a wave, and Percival Ravenscroft rode it, arms raised, grinning at the cameras. Behind the velvet curtain, Emeric Marchetti wasn't watching the stage. He was watching the numbers.

Third-quarter shipping contracts: down. The overseas partnership Percy had "personally closed": collapsed two weeks ago, quietly, before anyone but Emeric knew.

"Fix it," Percy had said, tie loosened, sweat on his collar. "Like you always do."

Emeric always did.

He opened his laptop backstage, typed fast, matched the letterhead, matched the phrasing Percy used when he wasn't panicking. He signed the extension himself — Percival R. Ravenscroft, the R looping the way Percy's had looped since they were twelve.

"You're a ghost," Thea Lindqvist said, appearing at his elbow with two coffees. She worked finance, she noticed things. "Nobody sees you do any of this."

"That's the job."

"Whose job? Yours or his?"

Emeric didn't answer. He never did, not to that question.

On stage, Percy was promising the room a partnership that no longer existed, and three hundred people were clapping for it.

"Someday," Thea said, "somebody's going to ask why the numbers don't match the story."

"Nobody's asking."

"Somebody's always asking, Emeric. You just haven't met them yet."

He almost laughed. Almost.

Later, past midnight, back in the small office his mother had once used as a supply closet before it became his, Emeric's phone lit up. An internal audit alert, cc'd to no one important — yet.

FLAGGED: Contract signatures — Q2/Q3 batch — inconsistency detected. Login timestamps do not match executive calendar. Review requested.

Three contracts. All logged under Percival Ravenscroft's name. All signed, at those hours, from Emeric's terminal.

He stared at the timestamp on the email. 12:04 a.m. Sent eleven minutes ago.

Somebody was already looking.