John Reardon hires Billy to attack Delilah

John Reardon hires Billy to attack Delilah when her audit threatens to expose the fraud concealed inside Scanguards. The event is the point at which financial manipulation, blackmail, family leverage, and violence become one connected criminal operation: John is not merely protecting stolen money, but trying to prevent both an auditor and a more powerful blackmailer from destroying him.

Causes and Background

John’s original scheme was comparatively small and technically specific. He altered accounting entries so equipment could be recorded at scrap value, then arranged for it to be sold at its actual value and kept the difference. The pressure behind the theft was personal as well as financial: after buying a new house, John faced a sharply increased mortgage interest rate and could no longer meet the payments. He treated the embezzlement as a desperate solution, even while recognizing that it did not justify stealing.

The scheme became more dangerous when an unidentified man learned what John had done and began blackmailing him. The blackmailer demanded access to the company’s books and systems, while refusing to reveal either his identity or his larger purpose. John inferred that the operation exceeded his own theft of a few thousand dollars: the demand for his login and password implied an attempt to reach deeper into the company’s records and resources. His small fraud therefore became an opportunity for a much larger one, and his concealment made him vulnerable to control.

Delilah’s arrival from New York transformed that vulnerability into an immediate crisis. John knew she was one of the best auditors and believed she would uncover the manipulated books. He feared the loss of his career and criminal prosecution, but the blackmailer imposed a more immediate threat: John was ordered to eliminate the auditor or be eliminated himself. The instruction converted an accounting investigation into a contract attack, with Delilah positioned as both the target of the fraud’s exposure and the obstacle to the blackmailer’s access.

The Hiring and the Family Leverage

John approached Billy by telephone, nervously pacing outside his house and repeatedly looking back toward the building so his wife, Karen, would not overhear him. Billy had already been paid, but he told John that Delilah continued to receive help and that he would not risk himself blindly. He had seen her with a man who defended her with his life and regarded that protector as deeply unsettling. The attack was thus not planned against an isolated auditor in a neutral workplace; it was being reconsidered because Delilah’s new connection made her more difficult and dangerous to reach.

Billy’s participation rested partly on his relationship to John. He was John’s brother-in-law, married to John’s sister, and explicitly framed his cooperation as a family favor rather than a normal business arrangement. That obligation had limits. Billy agreed to make one final attempt, warned that John would be on his own if Delilah escaped again, and demanded another thousand dollars. John accepted because Billy’s criminal record and contacts gave him practical access to violence, while Billy’s continuing need for money made him susceptible to manipulation.

John also concealed the full motive from Billy. He admitted the book-cooking but did not disclose the blackmailer, fearing that even mentioning the man might somehow bring consequences. His request that Billy do it “for Karen” added another layer of pressure: the attack was presented as protection of family, although its actual purpose was to protect John’s fraud and satisfy a threat directed at him. The family bond therefore functioned as a criminal resource, while the secrecy surrounding the blackmailer ensured that Billy understood only part of the danger.

The Attack as a Turning Point

The wider plot repeatedly places Delilah in spaces where protection is uncertain. In the rain, she becomes disoriented only a few blocks from her apartment and encounters a scarred man whose silhouette and imposing figure immediately signal danger. Later, at the theater, an armed man orders her and Samson against a wall, forcing Samson to protect her while concealing his vampire nature. After Delilah leaves Samson, she moves along a street of three-story apartment buildings and iron gates before hearing a motorcycle accelerate directly toward her; she drops her suitcase and runs, but the motorcycle rapidly closes the distance.

These episodes give the hired attack its narrative function even when the available account centers on John’s commission rather than on every physical detail of Billy’s assault. Delilah is repeatedly made into a suitable target by her professional knowledge and left exposed by the secrecy of the investigation. The attacks occur at thresholds between ordinary civic life and danger: a wet side street, a theater exterior, a dark residential road. Each setting narrows her choices, while the appearance of Samson and the wider Scanguards network changes the balance between attacker and victim.

The theater confrontation makes the stakes especially clear. Samson sees the gun and draws Delilah protectively against him, yet he cannot use his supernatural speed or fangs without revealing what he is. His need to defend her is therefore constrained by the need to preserve his identity. John’s plan collides with a protector who possesses extraordinary abilities but must act under human-looking limitations. The result is not simply an attempted assault; it is a pressure point where Delilah’s safety, Samson’s secrecy, and John’s fear converge.

Consequences for the Fraud Investigation

The commission confirms that Delilah’s audit is producing results. She notices that depreciation entries appear to have been manipulated methodically for nearly a year, then questions why records from both the current and preceding years have already been placed in storage when ordinary practice would generally archive material more than three years old. The irregular storage pattern suggests deliberate concealment rather than routine administration.

Her demand for original documents is equally important. Computer entries show which employee entered a transaction but do not necessarily establish who initiated and approved it. Shared passwords violate company rules and can obscure the true authorization chain, so the paper originals are needed to identify the people behind the bookings. The attack is consequently an attempt to stop an evidentiary process before it can connect altered entries to responsible individuals.

Delilah later explains the precise mechanism by which John exploited internal controls. He was authorized to write off old assets valued below $2,500 without an additional headquarters signature. By accelerating depreciation, he reduced assets beneath that threshold, approved their disposal himself, passed them to someone outside the company, and recovered the stated write-off value while keeping the difference between that amount and the items’ real value. This method links the attack directly to an opportunity created by a low-value disposal threshold: the crime depended not only on dishonest intent but on a procedural gap that could be manipulated.

The investigation then broadens beyond John’s personal embezzlement. Amaury discovers encrypted data uploaded to headquarters and asks Thomas, Scanguards’ information-technology specialist, to break into it. Later, Samson sees transaction screens showing Thomas logged in and authorizing John Reardon’s encrypted transactions, with approval notices appearing across the screen. These developments reveal why the blackmailer needed system credentials and why eliminating Delilah would serve a larger theft. John’s hired violence is the visible edge of an expanding operation involving encrypted records, compromised access, and transactions beyond the original scrap-value scheme.

Narrative Significance

The event marks a decisive value shift from reputational and legal danger to bodily danger. Before the commission, John’s principal fear is exposure: the end of his career, prosecution, and financial ruin. Once he hires Billy, the auditor’s discovery is treated as a problem to be solved through force. The accounting ledger becomes a hidden battlefield, and a professional act of verification becomes grounds for attempted murder.

The episode also exposes the structure of coercion beneath the plot. John is simultaneously perpetrator and victim: he deliberately falsifies the books and recruits Billy, yet he is himself threatened by an unseen blackmailer who uses the initial fraud to gain access to Scanguards. Billy is both accomplice and reluctant participant, held by money and kinship but unwilling to accept unlimited risk. Delilah is the target, but her audit gives her an unusual form of power, because the documents can reconstruct who initiated, approved, and benefited from the transactions.

By converting corporate misconduct into an attack on an auditor, the event binds the romantic and criminal narratives together. Delilah’s connection with Samson makes her harder to isolate, while Samson’s defense of her frustrates Billy and alarms John. The failed or disrupted attempts to reach her do not erase the threat; instead, they force the hidden fraud into the open and draw Scanguards into a direct investigation. John’s decision to hire Billy therefore accelerates the plot toward the exposure of the wider conspiracy, even as it places Delilah in immediate danger and makes John’s own responsibility impossible to separate from the violence he set in motion.