Chapter 3 - The Leak in the Boardroom
The glowing blue light of the tablet reflected off my face as I stared at the attached image file.
There it was: a crystal-clear photograph of Sophia and Samuel sleeping in my bed, taken from the angle of the doorway where Anna had stood. The metadata showed it was uploaded to a public financial blog at 12:44 AM—just moments after I encountered Anna.
"Look at this," I said coldly, turning the screen toward her.
Anna gasped, dropping her hand over her mouth. "That's... that's the view from the hallway. But the door was closed."
"It wasn't closed," I corrected, my mind racing through the timeline. "It was cracked open just enough for someone walking past to snap the frame. Someone who knew I was inside. Someone who wanted to trap us both."
"Greg," Anna whispered, her eyes wide with sudden realization. "He must have followed me up to check if I was cleaning your suite. He wanted to catch me doing something wrong to secure my termination."
"He didn't just want your termination, Anna. He wanted a scandal." I paced across the concrete floor, my shoes clicking sharply against the polished surface. "A corporate scandal involving the CEO harboring unauthorized guests in his presidential suite during a hostile takeover bid. The timing isn't random. My competitors are trying to paint me as reckless, unstable, and unfit to lead the merger vote next Monday."
"Because of me," she said, her voice shaking violently as she set Samuel down on a plush sofa, the boy finally settling back into a deep, exhaustion-induced sleep. Sophia curled up right beside him. Anna stood up, backing away toward the entryway as if preparing to flee into the night. "I've ruined your life. You brought me here out of pity, and now your company is going to tear you apart because of my kids."
"Stop," I snapped, closing the distance between us in two strides. I caught her by the wrist—not tightly, but with enough firmness to stop her retreat. "Look at me."
She looked up, her green eyes shimmering with unshed tears and raw panic.
"I didn't survive a childhood in foster care and ten years of corporate warfare by letting a middle-management coward and a bunch of Wall Street hyenas dictate my life," I told her, my voice low and fierce. "You are not a liability, Anna. You are a witness to corporate corruption, and right now, you and your children are safer in this penthouse than anywhere else in Manhattan."
"And your board?" she whispered, her gaze dropping to my hand holding her wrist. "What are they going to do when they find out you're sheltering the woman at the center of the leak?"
"Let them try to fire me," I said, releasing her wrist and walking back to the tablet. "Tomorrow morning, we’re going to turn the tables. But first, I need to know why Greg Miller has a financial backing account registered out of the Cayman Islands."
Anna froze. "Cayman Islands? Greg is just a shift supervisor. He drives a ten-year-old Civic."
"Not anymore," I said, tapping the screen to pull up his internal financial audit. "As of three days ago, someone wired fifty thousand dollars into his personal offshore account. The exact same day your building was sold to an anonymous shell corporation."
The puzzle pieces clicked into place with terrifying clarity.
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The eviction wasn't an accident. It was a calculated, orchestrated trap designed to break Anna, force her into desperation, and use her as a pawn to destroy my career.
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