Chapter 3

I walked out of his office, and I couldn't hold back my smile anymore.

Oliver thought he was playing some genius move to keep me in line.

But he had no idea I was ten steps ahead of him.

The day of the bidding arrived, and tension filled the conference room.

Our competitor, BrightTech Solutions, was scheduled to present before us. Their representative strutted onto the stage and opened their PowerPoint presentation.

The title blazed across the screen: [BrightTech Solutions—Smart City Lighting System Proposal.]

My colleague next to me gasped. "Susan, their proposal looks just like our first draft."

"It's not just similar—it's identical!"

Jessica sat in the back row with a smile she couldn't hide. She kept glancing at me, and her eyes were full of satisfaction, like she was thinking, "You're done for."

Oliver sat in the front row with a dark expression on his face. I couldn't read his mind.

The BrightTech representative went on and on, taking credit for my ideas and design concepts like they were his own.

Whispers started spreading through the audience. A few judges looked down at their materials and frowned.

Everyone knew the truth. Two companies couldn't come up with nearly identical proposals simultaneously. One of them had to be stealing.

And the one who presented first would have the upper hand.

In everyone's eyes, I'd gone from project hero to the backstabbing thief who stole trade secrets.

The BrightTech Solutions rep finished his presentation and bowed before stepping off the stage. He shot me a smug look on his way down.

The host's voice rang out across the room. "Next up, we have Susan from NovaTech Innovations."

I stood and smoothed down my suit jacket.

Every eye in the room was on me as I walked to the podium—some pitying, some contemptuous, others barely hiding their schadenfreude.

Jessica sat back with her arms crossed, looking perfectly relaxed. She was waiting for me to crash and burn.

I didn't open my PowerPoint right away.

Instead, I leaned into the microphone and said, "Before I begin my presentation, I'd like to show you all something interesting."

I hit play.

The screen behind me lit up with our company's internal network monitoring system.

A bright red data stream traced the path of an encrypted file as it traveled from Jessica's computer, bounced through several relay points, and landed in the personal email inbox of BrightTech Solutions' project director.

The file name was crystal clear: [Smart City Lighting System-V3.0-Bidding Version.]

I've even included the physical IP address locations and the verified identity information of BrightTech's project director right there on the screen.

The room erupted.

All the color drained from Jessica's face, and she shot to her feet, pointing at me. "You—you're lying! This is fake!"

I ignored her and kept going. "Take a look at this, everyone. Here's the proposal BrightTech just presented, and here's the original file stored on our company server."

I displayed both files side by side.

"If you look at page seventeen, you'll see the algorithm for node energy consumption. BrightTech's version has an incorrect parameter that would reduce the entire system's stability by thirty percent during extreme weather conditions."

I paused and let that sink in. "I deliberately planted that faulty parameter in version 3.0. I left it there as a trap."

My gaze swept across the room, landing on BrightTech's ashen-faced representative and then on Jessica, who looked like she might collapse. "I called it my 'thief trap.' Because only a thief would steal something and use it without thinking twice—without even bothering to check if what they stole was real."