The audit notice sat centered on the desk. Elena aligned the edges. She opened a fresh cardboard box and began pulling vendor contracts from the metal filing cabinet. Alexander sat beside her with his laptop open. He pulled up the Department of Commerce compliance portal. He ran a search on the audit trigger code. He verified the filing timestamp. The system logged the submission at two fourteen a.m. The routing path traced back to a Sterling Family Trust server node. Thomas had filed it himself.
"Forty-eight hours," Alexander said. His voice stayed flat. "They will walk through every transaction. They will check payroll against routing logs. They will verify tariff classifications. They will flag any mismatch over point three percent."
