The Analyst's Midnight File

Margot Dévereux audits companies nobody else wants to touch. Halcyon Logistics is the worst: a shipping empire run by a sixty-year-old CEO, a CFO who keeps his own hours, and a boss named Julian Cross who answers his office door at midnight in shirtsleeves with a glass of whiskey and no alibi. Then Margot's mentor turns up dead in a canal with a Halcyon purchase order in his coat, and Margot does what she's told never to do — she starts an investigation of her own. Julian catches her in chapter four, uncovers a whistleblower filing in her name, and offers her a choice: fire her, or help her. He helps. They track the CFO through Antwerp and Rotterdam, and somewhere between a warehouse ledger and a storage unit, the gap between them stops mattering. The Analyst's Midnight File is a standalone amateur sleuth age gap boss romance with a slow-burn partnership, a real puzzle, and a happily ever after on a Rotterdam balcony.