Chapter 7 - Tracking the Past
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By noon, my legal team had established a dedicated task force inside our war room.
Using the file names recovered from Rosa’s flash drive, my investigators managed to track down the two women Adrian had previously silenced: Maria Delgado and Elena Vance.
Maria, a former executive assistant at Sterling Tech, agreed to meet me at a quiet diner three miles from downtown.
When she sat across from me in the booth, her hands were trembling so violently she could barely hold her coffee cup.
“I signed an NDA, Miss Harper,” Maria whispered nervously, glancing around the empty diner. “If Adrian finds out I’m talking to you, he’ll sue me for everything I own. His lawyers made that very clear when I left.”
“An NDA cannot legally conceal criminal activity, Maria,” I explained gently, sliding my business card across the table. “Under state employment law, any non-disclosure agreement forced upon an employee through coercion or threats of prosecution is completely null and void.”
Maria took a deep breath, her eyes welling with tears.
“He tried to assault me in his office two years ago,” Maria confessed, her voice cracking. “When I threatened to go to HR, he told me he had already altered the security footage to make it look like I was stealing corporate files. He gave me two choices: sign the NDA and take a ten-thousand-dollar severance, or go to jail.”
“Did you keep copies of those emails?” I asked softly.
Maria reached into her purse and pulled out an old, yellowed folder.
“I kept everything,” she said. “I prayed for the day someone would finally have the power to stand up to him.”
I took the folder, holding it tightly against my chest.
May you like
“Your prayer just got answered,” I told her.
With Maria’s testimony and evidence added to Rosa’s recording, Adrian’s history of corporate extortion was no longer just an allegation. It was a fully documented criminal enterprise operating under the guise of a tech startup.
