Chapter 35 - The Phantom Leak
The morning after the Savoy Gala, the atmosphere in our Hyde Park penthouse war room was tense and electric. The declaration of war had been highly public, and the financial markets were reacting violently. Rose & Wren's stock surged on the news of our aggressive European expansion, but the real battle was happening beneath the surface. Julian stood by the massive digital display board, his usual easy smile replaced by a deep, calculating frown.
"We have a problem," Julian announced, pulling up a series of heavily encrypted data streams. "Sterling didn't just sit in his office and lick his wounds after you embarrassed him last night. He launched a counter-offensive. But it’s not a legal injunction or a supply chain block. It’s an internal leak."
I set my coffee down, my eyes narrowing. "Explain."
"Someone within our executive tier accessed the proprietary architectural blueprints for the European New Footprints project at 3:00 AM," Julian said, his fingers flying across his tablet to trace the digital footprint. "The file was copied and routed through a ghost server in Switzerland before the connection was severed. Sterling now has our exact structural designs, our energy grid layouts, and our targeted completion dates."
A cold, absolute fury settled in my chest. A leak wasn't just a security breach; it was a profound betrayal. We had survived the domestic wars because my inner circle was supposed to be completely impenetrable.
"Who had the clearance to access that specific server?" I demanded, walking over to the digital display.
"Only five people," Julian replied grimly, pulling up the executive profiles. "You, me, the Chief Financial Officer, the Head of European Acquisitions, and the Lead Architect. The credentials used belonged to the Lead Architect, David Thorne. But David is currently on a flight to Tokyo. He didn't execute the download."
"Someone cloned his credentials to frame him," I reasoned, staring at the faces of my most trusted lieutenants. "Sterling has a mole inside Rose & Wren. He’s trying to sow paranoia, trying to make us tear ourselves apart from the inside while he prepares to weaponize our blueprints."
May you like
"What do we do?" Julian asked, ready to deploy our internal security teams to tear the company apart.
"We don't panic," I said, a dark, brilliant strategy forming in my mind. "If Sterling wants to play in the shadows, we will give him exactly what he wants. We are going to feed the mole."
