Chapter 8

At ten in the morning, Theo called me into his office.

Sunny was there, too. She sat on the sofa next to Theo's desk, legs crossed, twirling a pen between her fingers.

Theo's face darkened. "Sofia, did you post that thread on the forum?"

"No," I said.

"Who did that?"

"I don't know."

Sunny spoke up, her voice gentle. "Theo, let it go. The post's already been deleted. Sofia doesn't seem like the type to do something like that."

She spoke up for me, but the way she did it was so perfectly neutral that Theo probably thought she was being generous. It made me look even more like the culprit.

Theo looked at me. "Sofia, are you going to cooperate with the legal investigation or not?"

I said, "I need a guarantee."

"What kind of assurance?"

"If the investigation proves those designs are my original work, how is the company going to handle it?"

Theo's jaw tightened. "Are you trying to cut a deal with the company?"

"I'm protecting what's mine."

Sunny stood up and walked over to Theo. "Theo, how about this? Let the legal team and a third party check it out together, so it's fair and square. If Sofia really didn't do anything wrong, I'll be the first to apologize to her."

When she said "apologize," her eyes glistened, like she was the one who deserved an apology.

Theo patted the back of her hand. "Alright, we'll do it your way."

I stood across from them, watching as he patted the back of her hand.

Three years of marriage, and not once did he comfort me like that when I was hurting. Not even a single time.

As I walked out of the office, Sam Ward came down the hallway from the other end.

Sam was the vice president of the Ludwig Group, in his early forties, the kind of guy who knows how to play the game and never steps on anyone's toes.

He paused when he saw me coming out of Theo's office. "Ms. Summers."

I stopped. "Mr. Ward."

Sam walked up to me and spoke in a voice so low that only the two of us could hear. "I saw that thread on the forum."

I waited for him to go on.

"I know that design style like the back of my hand. Nobody else in the company could've drawn up those designs." Sam paused. "But Ms. Summers, you need to think this through. It's not enough to prove they're yours."

I asked, "What do you mean?"

Sam adjusted his glasses. "It's not about proving who made the designs; it's about figuring out who's lying. Those are two totally different things."

With that, he nodded and walked right past me.

I stood there in the hallway, replaying his words in my head.

Who was lying?

Sunny's degree from Berringer Technical University was a sham. She used my designs for her tech talk. She framed me for leaking company secrets. But I needed solid proof for all of it.

Right now, all I had was the graduation roster Nina grabbed for me and the originals on my flash drive. It wasn't enough.

Back in the storage room, I booted up the old computer and logged into an industry insider portal.

The site had a repository of dissertations on chip design from major universities worldwide.

I entered Sunny Smith's name into the search box. Two results popped up right away.

The first was a conference paper from a small domestic conference in 2020.

The second was a master's thesis abstract in Berringer Technical University's database.

I clicked on the second file.

The title was about high-frequency chip cooling. The first paragraph of the abstract was all too familiar. Every technical phrase, the phrasing, even the punctuation. I knew them all. It was a word-for-word copy of an abstract from a paper I'd submitted back in 2019.

I'd submitted that paper to an international conference, but it got rejected. I saved it to my personal email and never touched it again.

Sunny took my rejected paper and passed it off as her master's thesis.

I took a screenshot of the page and saved it to my flash drive.

My phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number: [Ms. Summers, this is Zack Harrison. I'm at the coffee shop downstairs from the Ludwig Group. If you're free, come down and join me.]

I stood up, walked over to the window, and looked down.

Across the street, in the coffee shop, someone sat by the window, dressed in a dark suit. No coffee on the table. He was watching the Ludwig Group building.

I gripped my phone, eyeing his back for a moment.

I shouldn't meet him today.

With everyone at the Ludwig Group watching my every move, meeting up with their biggest competitor would give Sunny all the ammo she needed to take me down.

I stepped back from the window and texted him back: [Not today. Misty Mug. Monday 3 PM.]

Zack replied instantly: [Okay.]