The Cold Audit
Forensic auditor Vivian Kessler reads balance sheets the way other people read novels, for the lies hidden between the lines. So when her landline rings at 11:47 PM with a referral to audit a decades-old financial discrepancy, she knows she's in trouble before she picks up the phone. The case pulls her into the orbit of the powerful Thorne and Doyle dynasties, where corporate ledgers conceal something far more dangerous than embezzlement: a trail of bodies stretching back years, and a present-day conspiracy that's still adding to the count. Working alongside investigator Marcus Hollis and a tight circle of colleagues, Vivian begins to unravel a web involving a mysterious figure known only as the Unknown Tech, the long-dead patriarch Gabriel Thorne, and a lab worker whose identity nobody can confirm. As bodies start piling up in the present, Vivian realizes the audit she signed on for is actually a reckoning decades overdue. International connections surface through Pavel Marchetti, while corporate insiders close ranks around their secrets. Every receipt she uncovers brings her closer to a choice no spreadsheet can balance: walk away with her life, or finish the count, and become the next line item.