Chapter 5 - A Paper Trail of Greed
At 7:00 p.m., the floor was almost deserted.
Logan had stormed out of the building shortly after the board meeting, his face dark with humiliation. Arianna knew where he had gone—the Drake Hotel again, or some back-alley lounge, looking for alcohol to wash down the bitter taste of his public failure.
Arianna remained behind locked doors in her office. With her were Evelyn Davenport and Mark Taylor, the IT director. Mark had his laptop hooked directly into the mainframe's audit log.
"He took the bait, Arianna," Mark said, turning the screen toward her. "At 1:14 p.m., Logan accessed your restricted decoy file from his terminal. But that's not all. Look at the outgoing data transfers from his user account over the last three weeks."
Arianna leaned in. Her eyes scanned the IP addresses.
"He's been mirroring acquisition briefs to an external, encrypted proton mail address," Arianna noted, her voice dangerously quiet. "Who owns the receiving server?"
Mark tapped three keys. A corporate registration popped up.
"Apex Capital," Mark said.
Evelyn sucked in a sharp breath. "Apex Capital is our primary competitor for the Midwest logistics sector. Richard Vance—Logan’s distant uncle—is the managing partner."
The puzzle pieces snapped together with terrifying clarity.
"He wasn't just trying to steal my promotion," Arianna realized aloud, a humorless laugh escaping her lips. "He was sabotaging Davenport from the inside. He wanted the Director's chair so he could orchestrate the sale of our logistics division to his uncle at a discounted rate. He knocks me up to push me out, takes the seat, sells the company out to Apex, and walks away with a multi-million-dollar kickback from his family."
"It's corporate treason," Evelyn said, her voice shaking with quiet rage. "It's criminal fraud. If this leaks before we secure the state regulatory approvals, our stock will crater fifteen percent by morning."
"Then we don't let it leak yet," Arianna said, turning to Evelyn. "We don't fire him tonight. If we fire him now, Richard Vance pulls his liquidity, Logan hires a high-priced defense team, and they drag this through civil litigation for three years while painting me as a bitter ex-fiancée using pregnancy hormones to ruin a good man's name."
Evelyn studied Arianna's face. "What are you suggesting?"
"We let him think he still has a move to make," Arianna said, her fingers tracing the edge of the desk. "Tomorrow night is the Vance family pre-engagement dinner. His mother invited fifty prominent socialites and board members to announce our engagement and his 'inevitable rise' in Davenport Group. He thinks he’s cornered me socially. He thinks I won't create a scandal in front of Chicago high society."
"And will you?" Evelyn asked, an eyebrow arching.
"I won't create a scandal," Arianna whispered, her eyes flashing with diamond-hard resolve. "I will stage an annihilation."
Mark looked between the two women and swallowed hard. "What do you want me to do with the server logs, Arianna?"
"Clone them onto three separate encrypted flash drives," Arianna ordered. "Send one to Evelyn's private attorney, one to the Securities and Exchange Commission tip line under my whistle-blower ID, and keep the third one ready for me tomorrow night."
Arianna stood up, picked up her coat, and checked her watch.
"Where are you going now?" Evelyn asked gently.
May you like
"I'm going to see a doctor," Arianna said, her voice softening just an inch. "And then I'm going to see a divorce and family lawyer. Before the sun sets tomorrow, Logan Vance will be legally erased from my child's life."
***
