Chapter 27 - The Counter-Attack
Marcus Vance was not a man to wait passively for his own execution. If he couldn't intimidate me into dropping the audit, he would proactively destroy my credibility. Late Friday evening, Julian called me into his office. The room was dark, illuminated only by the city lights outside. He looked incredibly grim. He silently handed me a thick, red-tabbed dossier.
"Marcus just filed a formal, emergency complaint against you with the Board of Directors," Julian said, his voice tight. "He's claiming that you are using the unchecked power of the Ethics Division to embezzle funds. He has provided fabricated digital trails pointing directly to your personal offshore bank accounts."
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I opened the file. It was a masterpiece of corporate framing. Vance had hired elite hackers to manipulate Mercer's internal financial servers, planting false, highly convincing evidence to frame me for the very crimes he was committing.
He was using the exact same psychological playbook Grant had tried. He thought he could paint me as a hysterical, greedy, unstable woman who had manipulated her way into power only to steal from the company. He wanted to discredit the auditor before the audit could be published. He was tragically, fatally mistaken in his underestimation of me.
