Chapter 8 - The Midnight Blueprint
Marcus spent the next three days in the penthouse, tearing his office apart. He pulled up his personal, offline backups of the Harbor Point blueprints, analyzing every line of code, every calculation.
Sophie noticed his stress, sitting quietly by his desk and drawing pictures of dragons to "protect him from the bad guys."
At 2:00 a.m. on a Thursday, his personal laptop pinged. An encrypted email had arrived from an unknown sender.
The subject line: Look at the timestamp router jumps.
Marcus frowned. He opened the attachment. It was a highly classified internal IT log from Frost Meridian. He traced the data path. The sabotage to the blueprints had come from an IP address pinging the Zenith penthouse, but it was a spoofed bounce. The origin of the hack wasn't his apartment. It was a secured terminal in the Frost Meridian executive suite.
Richard Sterling’s terminal.
Before Marcus could fully process the discovery, a key turned in the front door of the penthouse.
Marcus grabbed a heavy brass paperweight, stepping out of the office.
The door opened, and Evelyn walked in, wearing a dark trench coat, looking exhausted. She immediately put her hands up.
"Put the paperweight down, Marcus," she whispered.
"You suspended me," he hissed, the betrayal still raw.
"I had to," she said, closing the door and walking toward him. "If I defended you, Richard would have gone to the board and claimed my judgment was compromised by our relationship. He would have ousted us both. I had to make him think he won."
She pointed to his laptop. "Did you read the email I sent?"
Marcus blinked, the pieces falling into place. "You sent the logs. You were investigating him."
"I have been investigating Richard for six months," Evelyn said, her voice fierce. "He has been trying to sink Harbor Point to force my resignation. He framed you because you are my closest ally. But to catch a rat, you have to let him think he’s safe in the cheese."
May you like
She stepped into his space, grabbing his face in her hands. "I am so sorry I had to freeze you out. But I needed you angry, and I needed him confident."
Marcus looked at the woman in front of him. Brilliant. Ruthless. Entirely devoted. He dropped the paperweight and kissed her hard. "So, how do we destroy him?"
