He wore a tailored charcoal suit, looking sickeningly confident. He was here as a prospective vendor, pitching his real estate consulting firm to our new parent company.
When his eyes met mine, his smile sharpened into a blade.
“Ah, Alexander,” Penelope greeted him. “We were just finishing the internal data review before your vendor pitch this afternoon.”
“Excellent,” Alexander said smoothly. He didn’t look at Daniel; he looked right at me. “I believe Victoria’s data will be very… revealing.”
Thirty minutes later, I was back at my desk, my pulse finally slowing, when Penelope’s assistant tapped my shoulder. “Penelope needs you in her office. Bring your security badge.”
I walked in to find Penelope standing behind her desk, her face grim. Beside her stood a man from IT security.
“Sit down, Victoria,” Penelope ordered.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, my palms growing slick with sweat.
“An hour ago, our cybersecurity monitors flagged a massive data breach,” Penelope said coldly. “Our proprietary Q4 marketing algorithms, the exact data sets tied to Alexander’s upcoming contract, were copied and emailed to a blind server belonging to our primary competitor.”
“What?” I gasped, standing up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The IT guy slid a printed log across the desk. “The firewall logs show the breach originated from your terminal, Victoria. Using your unique employee ID and password. It happened late last Thursday evening.”
The world tilted on its axis. Last Thursday evening. I had been at dinner with my sister. But I had left my office door unlocked for Alexander, who had said he needed a quiet place to take a client call while waiting to pick me up.
One phone call, and you won’t have a desk. He hadn’t made a phone call. He had laid a trap.
“This is a frame-up,” I said, my voice rising. “I didn’t do this! Alexander was in my office—”
“Alexander is a trusted vendor who is about to close a multi-million dollar deal with Mr. Pierce,” Penelope snapped. “You are a mid-level manager with a suddenly very suspicious digital footprint. Effective immediately, you are suspended without pay pending a full legal investigation. Hand over your badge and your laptop.”
I was escorted out of the building by security. I stood on the sidewalk, the cold wind whipping my hair, entirely broken. Alexander had stripped me of my love, my dignity, and now, my career and my freedom. I was facing corporate espionage charges.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from an unknown number.
He played me too. I know about the shell companies. Meet me at the Trattoria Rossi on 5th Avenue in ten minutes. Come alone.
Trattoria Rossi was dim, smelling of garlic and roasted tomatoes. I slid into a leather booth in the back corner. Waiting for me, sipping a glass of Barolo, was Meredith.
She wasn’t wearing red today. She wore a severe, black turtleneck and a trench coat. The bewildered woman from the airport was gone, replaced by an apex predator of the financial sector.
“Sit,” she commanded softly.
I sat. “Who are you?”
“I am the CFO of Vanguard Capital, the firm that was supposed to underwrite Alexander’s new venture,” Meredith said, swirling her wine. “After the… spectacle at the airport, I did some digging. A man who lies so effortlessly about his personal life is usually lying about his ledgers.”
“And?” I asked, leaning in.
“And he is,” Meredith’s eyes flashed with a lethal, icy fury. “Alexander isn’t building a legitimate consulting firm. He’s set up a network of shell companies. If Pierce Global signs that vendor contract today, Alexander plans to funnel thirty percent of the operational budget directly into his offshore accounts. I have the paper trail proving the shell companies belong to his cousin.”
My jaw dropped. “Why are you telling me this? Why not just go to the police?”
“Because white-collar fraud is notoriously difficult to prove without a smoking gun connecting the fraudster to the victim’s internal systems,” Meredith explained. “He needs your company’s proprietary algorithms to make the shell companies look like legitimate, high-performing vendors. He framed you to get the data out, and to remove you because you’re the only analyst smart enough to notice the discrepancies in his pitch.”
“So he steals the data, frames me, gets the contract, and steals the money,” I whispered, the sheer scale of his malice making me dizzy.
“Exactly,” Meredith slid a sleek, silver USB drive across the table. “This contains the financial tracking of his shell companies. But it’s not enough. We need proof that he physically used your computer to steal the algorithm. Without that, it’s his word against a suspended, scorned ex-girlfriend.”
“The security cameras,” I realized, my heart leaping. “There’s a camera in the hallway outside my office. If I can get the timestamped footage of him entering my office while I was gone…”
