Chapter 2

At five o'clock, the company posted an official disciplinary notice on the internal network.

Jessica was being penalized for "falsified background information." She'd receive a major demerit, lose three months' salary, and be "temporarily appointed" as Acting CFO pending further evaluation.

They'd raised the hammer high and brought it down softly.

I stared at "temporarily appointed" and tapped my fingers slowly against the desk.

When I'd been tracking her digital footprint, I'd stumbled across a few emails she'd sent to Oliver's personal account. The content wasn't work-related at all.

It read more like a younger woman complaining and acting cute with an older man, and the tone was way too familiar for comfort.

Oliver was willing to damage the company's reputation just to protect Jessica.

Their relationship clearly went beyond him just "recognizing her talent."

After work, I ran into Jessica in the underground parking garage.

She was leaning against a red Porsche with her makeup done up perfectly, but it couldn't hide the venom in her eyes.

She said, "Susan, you must be feeling pretty pleased with yourself."

I clicked my key fob, and my beat-up little car flashed its lights twice. "Not really. I just took back what was mine."

"What was yours?" She let out a cold laugh, like I'd just told the world's funniest joke. "Do you have any idea that if it weren't for you, I could've had that fifty thousand with my eyes closed?

"Now, because of you, I'm not only getting punished, but I have to figure out how to keep the auditors quiet!

"I'm keeping score, Susan."

I pulled open my car door and slid inside. "Ms. Warren, instead of wasting time threatening me, you should probably study up on the new supplemental tax filing policies."

I sneered, "After all, keeping people quiet costs money, and you wouldn't want to forget to pay your taxes on that."

I hit the gas and left her and her Porsche in the dust.

In my rearview mirror, her twisted face got smaller and smaller until it was just a tiny blur.

When I got home, I didn't rest.

I opened my laptop and logged into a hidden backend system.

On the screen, data from our company's internal network streamed past like a waterfall, refreshing at lightning speed.

When I joined the company three years ago, I immediately noticed that the network firewall had some illogical vulnerabilities.

I spent a month quietly building myself a backdoor with the highest level of access.

For three years, everything that happened on the company network was under my watch, and that included Jessica's hire.

I pulled up her onboarding recommendation email.

The sender was Oliver's personal account, and it went straight to the HR director.

The message was short and straightforward: [I vouch for this person. Fast-track everything.]

I screenshotted the email, saved it, and encrypted the file.

Then I started tracking every digital footprint Jessica had left since she joined.

She was careful and used proxy IPs for most of her activity. Still, even with massive amounts of data, traces were always left behind.

At three in the morning, I found it.

An encrypted email had been sent from Jessica's office computer to an unfamiliar address. The attachment was a document titled "Smart City Lighting System-V3.0-Bid Version."

That was the project proposal I'd poured my blood, sweat, and tears into for six months, and the email suffix belonged to our most significant competitor in this bid.

A chill ran up the back of my neck.

This wasn't just about the project anymore. This was life or death, and she was trying to bury me.

*****

I showed up for work the next day like nothing had happened.

Jessica spotted me, and her eyes darted away. She had this guilty little smirk on her face, like she was trying not to look too pleased with herself.

She probably thought I was already nailed to the wall for "leaking company secrets," just waiting for the bid to fail so they could kick me out.

During the morning department meeting, the project director asked about the final proposal for the Smart City project.

I kept my voice steady. "Still doing the final optimization. It'll be ready before tomorrow's bid."

Jessica let out this tiny scoff from her corner of the room.

I pretended I didn't hear it.

That afternoon, Oliver called me into his office.

It was the first time he'd wanted to see me alone since everything went down.

"Susan, sit." He made coffee and handed me a cup himself. "You've been working hard lately."

I took it with both hands but didn't drink. "Just doing my job for the company. It's not hard."

He looked at me with this complicated expression on his face. "The thing with Jessica—I didn't handle it well. She's young and impulsive, but she doesn't have a bad heart. Try to be patient with her."

I almost laughed out loud.

Turning someone's 200 thousand dollars bonus into 2 hundred bucks was not having a bad heart?

Selling someone's proposal to a competitor was just being impulsive?

"You're being too kind, Oliver." I lowered my eyes. "I'm just a regular employee. I just need to do my job."

"You're not just a regular employee." Oliver's tone shifted. "You're very capable. I admire that about you."

He added, "This Smart City project is crucial for the company. We have to succeed. Failure isn't an option."

His words hit hard, like he was warning me about something.

I lifted my head and met his eyes. "I understand."