Marcus straightened immediately. Show me. Daniel rotated his screen. A string of server transactions appeared. Hundreds of lines of data.
Most people would have seen gibberish. Marcus saw a story. Access requests, hidden pathways, deleted records. And then one specific entry made his pulse quicken. It wasn't what was there.
It was what wasn't. A block of activity had been erased entirely. Not archived, not moved. Erased. Someone had intentionally removed 27 minutes of server history on the exact night the anonymous dossier had been assembled.
Marcus leaned closer. Can you recover it? Daniel nodded slowly. Maybe, but whoever deleted this knew what they were doing. Marcus looked through the cafe window toward Crownspire Tower.
27 missing minutes. Sometimes entire empires collapsed because of less. Back upstairs, Grant finally reached the slide everyone had been waiting for. Photos appeared on the giant screen. Evelyn and Marcus working late.
Evelyn and Marcus leaving meetings. Evelyn and Marcus speaking privately in hallways. The images were harmless individually. Together they created something else. An implication, a suggestion, a narrative.
One director cleared his throat. Another shifted uncomfortably. Grant never directly accused anyone of misconduct. He didn't need to. He simply allowed the room to fill in the blanks.
"Perception matters, " he said. "Markets respond to confidence. " Evelyn felt anger rising inside her, but she refused to let it show. She knew this strategy. The goal wasn't to prove she had done something wrong.
The goal was to make defending herself feel exhausting, to force her into a position where resignation seemed easier than resistance. Then something unexpected happened. Diane Marshall spoke. She rarely spoke during board meetings. When she did, people listened.
"Do we have evidence of actual misconduct? " she asked. Grant hesitated for half a second. "The investigation is ongoing. " "That wasn't my question.
" The room shifted. Several directors looked toward Diane. She remained perfectly calm. Do we have evidence? Grant's smile tightened.
We're evaluating multiple concerns. Diane nodded slowly. So, the answer is no. For the first time all morning, Evelyn felt a small crack appear in the wall being built around her. Not enough to win, but enough to remind her that not everyone had surrendered their integrity.
Across town, Marcus received another call. This time it came from Olivia Trent. "Where are you? " she asked. "Working?