The day my uncle reported me, he dropped a $100 digital cash gift into the family group chat. The attached note read: "Good things are coming." Twenty-three people claimed a piece of it, and eight replied, "Congratulations." No one asked what they were congratulating him for. Because the day before, my uncle had announced in the group: "Someone's going to investigate Nolan's company." I looked at my phone screen and smiled. Let them investigate. I had been waiting for this day for three months. 1. My uncle's name is Richard Hayes, my dad's older brother. My dad, Robert Hayes, passed away from stomach cancer six years ago. When he passed, Uncle Richard came over. Not to pay his final respects. But to take the bank statements. "How much money did your dad manage to save up?" That was the first thing he said when he walked through the door. My mom was crying on the bed, and I stood in the doorway. "Uncle Richard, my dad hasn't even been buried yet." "I know," Uncle Richard said, sitting down. "But bank matters can't wait. If your dad had savings, we need to sort it out first. The Hayes family's money can't go to an outsider." Outsider. He glanced at my mom. My mom had been married into the Hayes family for twenty-six years, and in his mouth, she was an outsider. I didn't argue with him that day. My dad had $110,000 in his account. Uncle Richard took $60,000, calling it "his share of the brotherhood over the years." My mom stopped me from fighting him, saying, "Don't cause a scene with your uncle. Your dad just left us, and he's the only elder left in the family." I didn't cause a scene. I was twenty-four that year, two years out of college. My salary was $4,500 a month. $60,000 was more than a year of my salary. I remembered that. Later, I started my own company. It wasn't some legendary rags-to-riches tale. I just started by selling goods at local flea markets, then moved into wholesale snacks and beverages, building it up bit by bit. By the third year, my annual revenue surpassed five million. By the fifth year, it surpassed twenty million. Uncle Richard came to visit. "Nolan, your cousin Derek is working odd jobs, very unstable. Isn't your company short-staffed? Let him come help you." I looked at my uncle. "Uncle Richard, the company has a hiring process—" "What process?" Uncle Richard slammed his hand on the desk. "He's your own cousin! If your dad were still alive, would I even have to beg you?" My mom tugged at my shirt from the side. "Nolan, just let Derek come. We're all family." So, Derek joined the company. I put him in the purchasing department. A base salary of $8,000, plus commissions—he was taking home $12,000 to $15,000 a month. Double what he was making before. Uncle Richard was very satisfied. He was satisfied for three months. Then he came back. "Give Derek the Purchasing Manager position." "Uncle Richard, he's only been here for three months. He has no experience—" "What do you mean, no experience?" Uncle Richard scoffed. "If you can be the boss, your cousin—who is even smarter than you—can certainly be a purchasing manager!" I looked at him. "Uncle Richard, this is my company." "Your company?" Uncle Richard laughed. "If your dad were still alive, would this company even be yours to run?" That sentence was like a thorn, piercing right into me. I didn't say anything. The next day, I promoted Derek to Deputy Purchasing Manager. Not because of my uncle's words. But because my mom cried all night again. 2. After Derek became Deputy Manager, the demands from my uncle's family started to escalate. First, Aunt Susan called: "Nolan, your cousin is getting married, and he's a little short on the down payment for the house. Loan him $300,000." "Loan?" "Yes, loan. It's not like he won't pay you back." $300,000. I did have money in the company accounts at the time, but it was all tied up in cash flow. Pulling out $300,000 wasn't easy. My mom said: "Just loan it to him. It's family." So I loaned it to him. Transferred straight to Derek's account. I didn't even make him sign an IOU. Then Uncle Richard came again: "Your grandmother isn't doing well. You pay her hospital bills. You make a lot of money." I paid it. $80,000. Then Aunt Susan came again: "Derek's getting married, and we don't have enough for the banquet. Pitch in $50,000." I pitched in. Then Derek came: "Bro, I'm a little short on buying a car. Loan me $100,000." I loaned it to him. I keep a notebook. Every single transaction is recorded in it. It's not that I'm petty. It's that I discovered something. Uncle Richard was telling people outside: "My nephew's company, to be honest, relies on the Hayes family name. Could he be where he is today if I hadn't pulled him up back then? Giving us a little money is nothing." A former classmate of mine told me this. She heard it at the grocery store. My uncle was chatting with someone in the produce aisle. "Nolan makes so much, what's it to him to give us a little? If it weren't for the Hayes family reputation, who would do business with him?" $1.46 million. Eight years. That's the total amount I had spent on my uncle's family. His exact words were, "Giving us a little money is nothing." Derek worked at the company for three years. He was relatively honest the first year. Starting the second year, purchasing costs kept climbing. I asked him: "Why is this batch of raw materials 15% more expensive than last quarter?" He said: "The market price went up. You know how it is." I checked the purchasing prices of our competitors. They hadn't gone up. I then looked into the suppliers Derek was dealing with. And I discovered a pattern. Of the three new suppliers Derek recommended, two had legal representatives who were his college fraternity brothers. The suppliers quoted inflated prices, and Derek signed off on the invoices. Where did the price difference go? I had finance audit all the purchase orders Derek was responsible for. Three years. Total difference: $870,000. $870,000. I gave him $300,000 for his house down payment. $100,000 for his car. Plus his salary, commissions, and holiday bonuses. His way of repaying me was embezzling $870,000 from my company. Sitting in my office that night, looking at that report, my hands were shaking. Not out of fear. But out of anger. 3. I didn't expose Derek immediately. I did something else. I hired a professional CPA firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of the company's accounts for the past three years. The public explanation was, "The company is seeking outside financing and needs to bulletproof its financials." Derek didn't take it seriously. He even told his dad: "Nolan is trying to get investors. Make sure he gives me a VP title when the money comes in." The day the audit results came out, I locked my office door and spent the entire afternoon reading it. Besides Derek's embezzlement, the audit revealed something else. Because of the fake invoices Derek had created, several company expenses were misclassified. As a result, the company had overpaid nearly $500,000 in taxes over the past three years. $500,000. I could apply for a tax refund from the IRS for this amount. But I didn't apply for it immediately. Because I suddenly thought of a scenario. If someone reported me to the IRS for tax evasion and they came to audit my books— What would they find? They would find that I hadn't evaded a single cent. They would find that I had actually overpaid taxes. And they would find that Derek had been cooking the books for three years. I closed the audit report. Then, I fired Derek. The reason given was "company restructuring and downsizing." I gave him a generous severance package. Sent him off with full dignity. Derek even shook my hand when he left: "Bro, thanks for taking care of me these past few years." I looked at his face. And smiled. "Don't mention it." Uncle Richard exploded. He stormed into my house that very night. "What the hell is the meaning of this?!" "The company is restructuring. It has nothing to do with Derek personally." "Bullshit! He was doing a great job. What right do you have to fire him?" "Uncle Richard, it was a company decision." "A company decision? Your company? If it weren't—" He was about to say that sentence again. I cut him off. "Yes, my company. My name is on the LLC registration." Uncle Richard glared at me. "Nolan, don't forget your last name is Hayes." "I haven't forgotten." I looked right into his eyes. "But the name Hayes was given to me by my dad. Not you." My uncle slammed the door when he left. The noise was so loud it rattled the windows. My mom was pale with fear. "Nolan, how could you speak to your uncle like that..." "Mom, he stole $870,000 from my company." My mom froze. "What?" "Derek took kickbacks at the company. For three years. $870,000." My mom sat on the sofa, speechless for a long time. After a while, she finally said something. "Well... just let it go. We're all family..." I looked at my mom. "$1.46 million." "Huh?" "In these eight years, I've spent $1.46 million on Uncle Richard's family. Add the $870,000 Derek stole. That's a total of $2.33 million." I enunciated every word. "Mom, you tell me, which relative on earth is worth $2.33 million?" My mom stopped talking. 4. A month after Derek was fired, I noticed something. The company's financial system login records showed that after Derek left, someone tried to log in using his old credentials. The login failed because I had already changed all the passwords. But the IP address of the login attempt was traced back to my uncle's house. I had my IT guy dig deeper. It wasn't just once. Over the past month, there were seventeen login attempts. All from Uncle Richard's IP. They were trying to get into the company's financial system. Why? To find "evidence" of my tax evasion. I looked through the backups of Derek's computer from when he was still employed. I found that before he left, he had copied a massive amount of files to a hard drive. Purchase orders, expense reports, tax return forms. Some were real. Some he had altered. He had modified the traces of his fake accounts, making those inflated numbers look like I was artificially inflating costs to evade corporate taxes. I sat in front of my computer, staring at the screen. They weren't reporting me on impulse. They had been preparing this for at least half a year. They started collecting materials and modifying data while Derek was still drawing a paycheck from me. The firing was just the catalyst. They had been planning to destroy me for a long time. That day, I called Mr. Harrison, the head CPA at the accounting firm. "Mr. Harrison, regarding that audit report, I need you to generate a detailed version for me." "Mr. Hayes, how detailed?" "Detailed down to the original vouchers, the cash flow, and the final destination of every single fraudulent transaction." "Understood." "Also," I added, "hold off on filing for that tax refund for now. Wait for my signal." Mr. Harrison paused. "Mr. Hayes, are you waiting for someone?" I didn't answer. I just hung up. I was waiting for Uncle Richard. He moved faster than I expected. Forty-seven days after firing Derek, I received a call from the IRS. "Mr. Hayes, we've received a whistleblower report alleging that your company is engaging in tax evasion. According to procedure, we need to conduct a tax audit. Please cooperate." "Understood. When would be a convenient time?" "The day after tomorrow, at 9:00 AM." "No problem." I hung up the phone. I opened the family group chat. Sure enough, Uncle Richard had already sent a message. "Good things are coming." Below it was a digital cash gift for $100. Twenty-three people grabbed a piece. Eight replied "Congratulations." Aunt Susan sent a voice message: "Let's see how stubborn he is this time!" Derek sent a sinister, smirking emoji. Uncle Thomas asked: "What good thing?" Uncle Richard replied: "You'll all know when the time comes." I put down my phone. Picked up my office receiver and called Mr. Harrison. "You can start preparing the tax refund documents." 5. The day the IRS arrived, I got to the company an hour earlier than usual. I organized all the ledgers, vouchers, and reports, and placed them neatly in the conference room. The CPA audit report remained locked in my desk drawer. At exactly 9:00 AM, three IRS agents arrived. The lead agent, a man named Miller, was in his forties and looked incredibly stern. "Mr. Hayes, we received a report alleging that your company is artificially inflating costs to evade taxes. By law, we need to conduct a comprehensive audit of your company's accounts for the past three years." "Agent Miller, full cooperation is guaranteed. All the materials are in the conference room. You have full access." I opened the door to the conference room for them. Agent Miller gave me a strange look. Most business owners being audited didn't look this relaxed when the IRS walked in. I was too calm. He didn't say anything and led his team inside. At 10:00 AM. A large passenger van pulled up to the company entrance. Uncle Richard was here. And not just him. Uncle Richard, Aunt Susan, Derek, Uncle Thomas, Aunt Carol, and seven or eight distant relatives whose names I could barely remember. Over twenty people in total. A massive, marching contingent. "Uncle Richard, what are you all doing here?" Jessica, my receptionist, tried to stop them. "Just taking a look around!" Uncle Richard boomed, his voice echoing in the lobby. "Taking a look at Nolan's company!" He looked around, a look of absolute triumph in his eyes. "Seeing how many more days this place can keep its doors open!" I looked down from the interior window of my office. Over twenty people were crammed into the reception area. A few employees had already stopped working to watch the spectacle. I called the front desk. "Let them up." "Mr. Hayes?" Jessica's voice sounded panicked. "Let them up," I repeated. "Open the main boardroom. Serve them coffee." When Uncle Richard led the group upstairs, his face practically screamed, I've finally waited for this day. He looked even more triumphant when he saw the IRS agents working in the adjacent conference room. "Oh, you boys are already here?" He pulled up a chair and sat down in the boardroom. "Audit away, audit thoroughly." Agent Miller stepped out and frowned. "And you are?" "I'm his uncle." Uncle Richard pointed at me through the glass. "To be honest, the Hayes family owns a piece of this company too." Agent Miller looked at me for confirmation. I nodded. "He's my uncle. Let him watch." Uncle Richard looked even more pleased with himself. He waved at the relatives behind him. "Sit down, everyone, sit down! Let's all see what kind of 'good deeds' Nolan has been up to today!" The relatives filed in, filling the main boardroom. Aunt Susan sat in the front row, legs crossed, looking smug. Derek stood in the corner, hands in his pockets, trying to look expressionless but failing to hide a smirk. After sitting down, Uncle Thomas whispered to his wife: "Richard said the IRS found massive problems. He might be fined millions and go to federal prison." Aunt Carol gasped: "Then isn't he completely finished?" The voices weren't loud. But I heard them. Over twenty pairs of eyes stared at me through the glass partition. Not a single look held an ounce of concern. Some were gloating. Some were just waiting for the show. Some looked entirely indifferent. And then there was one—Uncle Richard. His eyes held naked, greedy expectation. Waiting for my downfall. Waiting to see me cry. Waiting for me to beg him for mercy. I sat in my leather chair and took a sip of my coffee. Good. If it's a show you want, it's a show you'll get. I wanted to see who would be crying when the curtain fell. 6. The IRS audited for two days. During those two days, my uncle came every single day. The first day, he could sit still. By the second day, he was getting restless. "Why aren't they done auditing yet?" He paced back and forth in the hallway, looking agitated. "Is it almost done?" He asked every agent who stepped out of the conference room to use the restroom. No one answered him. At 4:00 PM on the second day, Agent Miller asked to speak with me in my office. "Mr. Hayes, the preliminary audit results are ready." "Okay." "Regarding the materials provided by the whistleblower, I need to verify a few things with you." "Go ahead." Agent Miller opened a thick manila folder. "The whistleblower provided copies of several purchase orders and tax returns from 2021 to 2023, claiming your company evaded taxes by artificially inflating costs." He looked at me over his glasses. "But we found during our cross-referencing that the materials provided by the whistleblower and the actual data entered into the company's books—don't match." "They don't match?" "The numbers on the purchase orders provided by the whistleblower are significantly higher than the actual numbers entered into your ledgers." I remained silent. "In other words," Agent Miller paused, "the materials provided by the whistleblower have been intentionally altered." I nodded. "I know." Agent Miller looked at me sharply. "You know?" "These purchase orders were handled by my former Deputy Purchasing Manager, Derek Hayes. During his employment, he artificially inflated purchasing costs and transferred the difference into his personal accounts. These altered materials you received are copies he modified and exported before he left the company." I unlocked my desk drawer and pulled out the CPA audit report. "This is a comprehensive audit I commissioned from an independent accounting firm half a year ago. It contains the complete chain of evidence of Derek's fraudulent accounting." I handed the heavy binder to Agent Miller. "It includes the original vouchers for every fraudulent transaction, the corresponding bank statements, and the private accounts where the funds ultimately ended up." Agent Miller flipped through a few pages. His expression shifted from professional skepticism to absolute shock. "Mr. Hayes... with this level of evidence, why didn't you report this to the police months ago?" I smiled. "Because I was waiting for someone to make the first move."
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "394667", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel