“I trusted you. I let you into my home. I let you near my business. I let you…” He stopped, swallowing hard. “I thought you were different. I thought you were the one honest person in a city of liars. But you’re the worst of them all. Because you made me care.”
“Ethan, please,” Sarah begged, reaching out.
“Don’t touch me,” he recoiled. “You’re fired. Security will escort you off the premises immediately. You have one hour to pack your things. If you’re not gone, I’ll have you arrested for corporate espionage.”
“What about Leo?” Sarah whispered. “He’s still recovering. The insurance…”
“You should have thought about that before you sold me out,” Ethan said coldly. He turned his back to her again. “Get her out of here.”
The security guards grabbed Sarah’s arms. As they dragged her out, she saw Veronica standing behind Ethan. Veronica winked at her. A slow, deliberate wink.
Sarah was thrown out of the mansion gates with two suitcases. It started to rain. She stood on the curb, sobbing, humiliated, and terrified. She had lost the job. She had lost the man she was falling in love with. And soon, she would lose the insurance keeping her son alive. She had hit rock bottom before. But this time, the fall was from a penthouse.
Sarah spent the night in a cheap motel near the hospital. She couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Ethan’s face, the look of betrayal.
$50,000 wired to my account. My IP address.
She knew she hadn’t done it. Which meant Veronica had hacked the system. Veronica was smart, but she was arrogant. She would have covered her digital tracks.
But Sarah remembered something Ethan had told her in the warehouse that first night: My auditors missed it because they were looking for financial transaction errors, not physical weight discrepancies.
Veronica relied on digital manipulation. But physical evidence? That was harder to fake.
Sarah sat up in bed. The board vote was today at 2:00 PM. She looked at the clock. 9:00 AM. She grabbed her phone and dialed a number she had memorized from the shipping logs.
“Hello?” a gruff voice answered.
“Is this JR, the loading supervisor at Pier 59?”
“Yeah, who’s asking?”
“My name is Sarah Miller. I used to work for Mr. Sterling. I need you to let me into the archives. Now.”
“I heard you got fired, lady. I can’t let you in.”
“JR, listen to me,” Sarah said, her voice shaking but fierce. “I know about the extra crates you log on the side to keep the union off your back. I know you’re a good man who just wants to keep his guys employed. If Veronica Vance takes over today, she’s going to automate the entire dock. You’ll all be fired by Christmas. I’m the only one who can stop her.”
There was a long silence on the other end. “Meet me at the back gate in 20 minutes,” JR said.
Sarah spent the last of her cash on a taxi. When she got to the warehouse, JR let her in. He looked tired.
“The archives are in the basement,” he said. “Old school. Paper. We only digitize what we send to HQ.”
Sarah ran down the metal stairs. The basement smelled of mold and dust. Rows of filing cabinets stretched out before her. She needed to find the visitor log for the mansion server room. The digital logs said Sarah had logged in at 3:00 AM from the guest wing. But the physical security system at the mansion, the backup system installed in the basement that ran on a closed circuit, wasn’t connected to the internet. It had a hard drive that recorded keycard swipes, but she couldn’t get to the mansion.
Think, Sarah, think!
She paced the room. Veronica framed her for sending files to Omnicorp. The transfer happened at 3:00 AM.
Sarah started pulling files related to Veronica’s expense reports. Ethan had given her access to everything weeks ago, and Sarah had made photocopies of suspicious documents to study later—a habit from her days of couponing. She still had her notebook in her purse.
She flipped through the pages. Veronica claimed she was in New York last week. But here, a receipt for a private courier service in Seattle on the same day.
Destination: Omnicorp Headquarters.
Sender: V. Vance.
Contents: Hard drive.
Sarah froze. Veronica hadn’t sent the files digitally at all. She had physically mailed a hard drive weeks ago to set up the deal, then faked the digital transfer last night to frame Sarah.
But she needed proof that Veronica was the one who authorized the wire transfer to Sarah’s account. She looked at the bank transfer document. The security guard had given her a copy with her termination papers. The authorizing signature was digital: E. Sterling. But the timestamp on the authorization was 4:15 AM.
Sarah looked at the warehouse shipping logs on the desk. At 4:15 AM this morning, the system showed a login from the Sterling yacht, which was docked in the harbor…
