Chapter 46: The First Confrontation
Word of what Dinh
Bac could do traveled up to the executive floor fast.
Dinh Bac hadn’t
been at Truong Sinh long, and he’d already turned up a string of discrepancies
buried in the old files. None of them were enormous on their own, but every one
had survived round after round of review without a single person catching it.
Minh Quan heard
the report and asked to meet the new hire.
That morning,
Dinh Bac was at his desk when the division head came in.
“Dinh Bac. Vice
Chairman Minh Quan wants to see you.”
His hands went
still on the keyboard.
Phuong Nga’s head
came up.
“Is something
wrong?”
The division head
laughed. “Nothing’s wrong. The Vice Chairman heard we’ve got someone talented
down here and wants to put a face to the name.”
Dinh Bac closed
out of his screen.
“Understood.”
Dinh Bac stood,
straightened his cuff, and walked out.
Nobody saw that
under that sleeve, his hand was clenched white.
Six years. He’d
played this meeting out in his head more times than he could count.
In his dreams he
still heard his mother calling his name through the rain. Still saw the car
lose the road and go over the edge. Still heard that flat, reasonable voice
belonging to the uncle who had stripped away the hospital, the money, and his
right to live like an ordinary human being, one piece at a time.
But this wasn’t a
dream.
He couldn’t
afford to let one look or one word wreck everything he’d built.
The door to the
Vice Chairman’s office opened.
Minh Quan was
standing at the window with a document folder in his hands. At the sound of
footsteps, he turned.
The years had
done their work on him. Grey had crept into both temples and the lines around
his eyes had deepened. But the calm he wore over the top of it hadn’t changed
at all.
It was the face a
great many people had once trusted. It was also the face that had hidden every
calculation he’d made for years.
The assistant
made the introduction.
“Sir, this is
Dinh Bac.”
Minh Quan looked
at the man in front of him.
An unfamiliar
face.
A voice with
nothing of Lam Khai Minh left in it.
Not one flicker
of suspicion crossed his mind.
“Please, sit.”
Dinh Bac inclined
his head.
“Thank you, sir.”
Minh Quan set the
folder down.
“I’ve read your
reports. The division head speaks very highly of your ability to catch
inconsistencies in the data.”
“I only do my
job.”
“Not everyone who
does their job does it well. Truong Sinh is fortunate to have brought in
someone with your experience.”
Minh Quan asked
about the years Dinh Bac had spent studying and working abroad. The answers
came back short, and matched the file that had been built for him down to the
last detail.
Every sentence
steady. Expression and manner pitched exactly right.
And behind it
all, his left eye was beginning to cloud from the strain.
Dinh Bac looked
at the man who had destroyed his family. And for one moment he remembered being
a boy who had called this person uncle.
The day his
parents died, Minh Quan had put a hand on his shoulder and told him he still
had his uncle.
That same hand
had later put him in a jail cell, then a psychiatric ward, then the bottom of
the city.
Minh Quan’s voice
stayed mild.
“I hope you’ll be
with the group a long time.”
“So do I.”
It was the only
completely honest thing he said in that room.
Staying inside
Truong Sinh was the whole point. Every single thing Minh Quan had done, he
intended to dig up, and beyond that, if he could, to climb higher than the man
himself.
When they were
finished, Minh Quan stood and offered his hand.
Dinh Bac looked
at it for a beat, then took it.
“Welcome to
Truong Sinh.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Their hands were
joined for a few seconds, no more.
Minh Quan was
entirely pleased with himself for landing a capable new employee. He had no
idea the man standing in front of him was the nephew he’d been certain had no
road back.
Dinh Bac didn’t
return to his division right away.
Dinh Bac stood
alone at the end of the corridor until his vision steadied. The palm that had
gripped Minh Quan’s stayed cold. He didn’t let the anger take him.
That night, he
started working back through every document his position gave him access to.
He pulled the
reports covering Truong Sinh’s takeover of Vinh An Hospital. He lined up the
transfer dates, the sums that had been broken into smaller pieces, and the
entities that had received capital afterward.
At the same time,
he quietly followed whatever traces of MK-2 were still in the system.
There wasn’t much
left. A great many documents had been locked or moved to other departments.
Some payments appeared only under a general project name, with no stated
purpose. Anything touching MK-2 was thinner still, mostly archive codes and
edit timestamps.
He didn’t dig any
deeper.
He had only just
walked through the door. A single irregular access could send six years of
preparation down the drain. And he understood better than anyone that this
fight was only beginning, and that it might not be paid for in money and tears
alone. It might be paid for in blood.
Every thread,
every date, every gap in the record went into his notes.
He had no answers
yet. But at least he was standing somewhere he could start looking.
Beyond the glass,
the top floor of the Truong Sinh building was still lit.
Dinh Bac watched
that light and thought about the delight on Minh Quan’s face as he welcomed him
aboard.
The uncle from
years ago hadn’t recognized the nephew he’d driven into the ground.
And Dinh Bac had
never forgotten that face for a single day.
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