Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Workplace
Lauren’s guest room was small, peaceful, and blessedly free of anything bearing the Voss family monogram.
For forty-eight hours, I lived in a bubble of artificial calm. I turned off my personal phone, borrowed Lauren’s spare laptop to check work emails, and focused on the quarterly pitch deck for our agency’s largest client—a sustainable outdoor apparel brand looking to launch a nationwide retail campaign.
Work had always been my anchor. In marketing, causality made sense: you identified an audience, crafted a narrative, monitored the metrics, and adjusted for friction. People responded to incentives. Systems functioned predictably.
The Voss family was an emotional black hole where the laws of physics simply collapsed.
On Wednesday morning, I walked into the downtown offices of Apex Brand Strategy feeling marginally human. The bruise on my shoulder was hidden beneath a tailored navy blazer, my hair was blown out, and I had applied enough concealer under my eyes to hide two sleepless nights.
At nine-thirty, my boss, Marcus Vance, walked past my glass-walled office, paused, and knocked softly on the doorframe.
“Clara. Got a minute?”
Marcus was fifty-two, an ex-New Yorker who ran the agency with high expectations and zero tolerance for office politics. If he liked your work, he left you alone. If he didn't, you knew within twenty-four hours.
“Of course,” I said, closing my notebook and following him down the corridor to his corner office.
When Marcus closed the heavy frosted glass door behind us, my stomach dropped. He didn't sit behind his desk. He leaned against the front edge, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression uncharacteristically grim.
“Close the blinds,” he said.
I turned the plastic wand, shutting out the bustling open-plan office outside. When I turned back, Marcus tapped a printed document resting on his blotter.
“An email came through to our corporate ethics inbox at five this morning,” Marcus began without preamble. “Sent from a proton-mail account. Encrypted, untraceable at first glance.”
A cold bead of sweat formed at the nape of my neck. “What did it say?”
“It claimed that a senior account director at our firm—specifically you—has been leaking proprietary campaign strategy decks for the GreenTrail account to a competing agency in Dallas.” Marcus looked up, his grey eyes piercing. “It included three attached PDFs. Draft versions of your deck from last Friday. Complete with internal watermarks.”
The air left my lungs.
“Marcus, that’s impossible,” I stammered, my hands gripping the back of the leather guest chair. “I haven't sent those files to anyone outside the core team! I haven't even uploaded them to the shared server yet; they’ve been sitting on my encrypted work drive!”
“I know,” Marcus said quietly. “Which is why I had our IT director, Greg, pull the server logs an hour ago.”
I held my breath.
“The files weren't pulled from your laptop, Clara,” Marcus continued. “They were accessed via your remote login credentials on Sunday evening at 6:45 PM. From an IP address registered to a residential internet connection in West Lake Hills.”
I sank down into the chair, the room spinning around me.
Sunday evening. 6:45 PM.
That was the exact time Daniel and I were at his parents' house. While Marcus Cole was discussing NDAs and Estelle was dishing out salmon, my purse—containing my personal phone and my work key fob with its two-factor authentication tokens—had been sitting unattended on the console table in the Vosses’ front entryway.
Vivian had gone to the powder room right before the confrontation in the dining room. She had been gone for ten minutes.
*Ten minutes.*
She hadn't just used the restroom. She had walked into the foyer, opened my bag, accessed my corporate login, and forwarded the files to herself.
“Marcus,” I whispered, my voice shaking with pure, unadulterated fury. “I didn't leak anything. My fiancé’s sister... she’s trying to destroy my life.”
Marcus studied me for a long, agonizing moment. He reached across the desk, picking up a pen and clicking it once.
“I’ve been in this business for thirty years, Clara. I know corporate espionage when I see it, and this isn't it. The email was sloppy. The sender claimed you took a fifty-thousand-dollar kickback, but didn't provide a single routing number or account slip. Whoever sent this didn't want to steal the account. They wanted me to fire you on the spot.”
He leaned forward, his voice dropping. “Who is she?”
“Vivian Voss,” I said, the name tasting like poison on my tongue. “She manages regional supply chains for Starlight Retail.”
Marcus’s eyebrows shot up. “Starlight? The retail chain out of Dallas?”
“Yes.”
Marcus let out a low whistle. “Their corporate board sits on the Austin Chamber of Commerce with my wife. Small town, Clara. Very small town.”
He pushed the printed email across the desk toward me. “Take this to a lawyer. Our IT team is currently archiving the IP logs, the server timestamps, and the digital footprint. If you need an affidavit from Apex confirming that your credentials were breached from that specific address in West Lake Hills, our legal counsel will provide it.”
Tears burned the backs of my eyes, but this time they weren't tears of grief. They were the hot, clarifying tears of someone who has finally found solid ground.
“Thank you, Marcus,” I whispered.
“Don't thank me yet,” Marcus said firmly. “Handle your business, Clara. Because if this personal circus knocks on my front door again, I won't have a choice. I have seventy employees whose paychecks depend on this firm’s reputation. Fix it.”
“I will.”
I walked out of Marcus’s office, down the elevator, and straight out into the midday heat of Congress Avenue.
I pulled my personal phone from my purse, switched off airplane mode, and waited.
Within thirty seconds, the notifications exploded. Forty-two missed calls. Thirty-eight text messages. Voicemails from Daniel, Estelle, and Walter.
I ignored all of them. I scrolled straight to the contact list, found the number I needed, and pressed call.
Daniel answered on the first ring.
“Clara! Oh, God, Clara, please—where are you? I’ve been looking for you everywhere! I went to Lauren’s apartment, but she wouldn't open the door, she threatened to call the police—”
“Daniel,” I interrupted, my voice dropping to a register so icy it made him stop instantly.
“...Clara?”
“Meet me at the Starbucks on Fifth and Lamar in twenty minutes,” I said. “If you aren't there, do not bother coming back to the apartment. Ever.”
“I’m on my way. I’m five blocks away right now.”
“Twenty minutes, Daniel. And bring your conscience, if you have one left.”
I hung up, dialed Lauren, and gave her three instructions: “Send the video to my email. Call your husband’s brother at the Austin Police Department. And find me the best restraining order attorney in Travis County.”
It was time to stop managing Vivian Voss.
May you like
It was time to crush her.
***
