I pushed open the door to the breakroom. The older man was standing by a deep aluminum sink, running a wet paper towel over his stained gray shirt.
"Hey," I said softly, stepping inside. "I... I wanted to apologize. On behalf of the company. What just happened out there was completely inexcusable."
The man turned off the faucet. He looked at me, his eyes sharp and evaluating. "You're David Miller. The CFO."
"Yes," I said, a little taken aback that he knew my name. "Listen, if you want to file a formal complaint with HR, I will personally back you up. I saw the whole thing. Brad had no right."
The man tossed the wet paper towel into the trash bin. "HR works for Brad, David. Filing a complaint against the man who signs their paychecks is a fast way to find yourself unemployable."
"I know," I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck. "But it isn't right. Let me at least pay for a new uniform. Or dry cleaning. Whatever you need." I reached for my wallet.
"I don't need your money," he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. He rolled up the sleeves of his gray uniform, preparing to wash his forearms.
As the fabric slid back, the fluorescent light caught a flash of heavy, polished metal on his left wrist.
I froze.
It was a watch. Specifically, a vintage Patek Philippe Grand Complication. I recognized it immediately because my late wife used to work in high-end auction houses, and she had once pointed one out in a catalog. It was a piece of mechanical art that retailed for well over half a million dollars.
A maintenance guy making twenty dollars an hour was wearing a watch that cost more than my entire life insurance policy.
Before I could say anything, the man smoothly pulled the sleeve back down, covering the watch. He picked up his toolbox. "You have a good heart, David. Try not to let this place ruin it."
He walked past me, disappearing down the concrete hallway.
I stood alone in the breakroom, my mind racing. A maintenance worker with a Patek Philippe who isn't afraid of a billionaire CEO. Who the hell was that?
I didn't have time to process it. My phone vibrated in my pocket. A text from Brad: Where are the Omni files? My office. NOW.
I took the elevator up to the top floor, the executive suite. The carpet here was thick enough to swallow a golf ball. Brad's office was at the end of the hall, enclosed in smart-glass that could turn opaque at the touch of a button. Right now, it was transparent.
I pushed the heavy glass door open. "Brad, I have the revised Q3 projections for the Omni meeting—"
I stopped. The office was empty. Brad’s suit jacket was draped over his ergonomic chair, but he wasn't there.
I sighed, setting my leather portfolio down on his massive mahogany desk. As I did, the screen of Brad's personal tablet, resting flat on the desk, lit up. A notification had pushed through, waking the device.
Brad had left the tablet unlocked.
I knew I shouldn't look. I was the CFO, but Brad maintained absolute control over the raw server data and user acquisition metrics. He claimed it was to protect our intellectual property. My job was just to package the numbers he gave me into presentable financial models for the investors.
But my eyes caught the header of the open document on the screen: Omni Capital Acquisition - TRUE DATA ASSET.
I frowned. True data asset?
I reached out and tapped the screen, opening the master spreadsheet. I scrolled past the summary page, digging into the raw daily active user (DAU) logs.
My breath hitched in my throat.
The numbers didn't match anything I had been given. The official projections I had meticulously prepared for Omni Capital stated we had four million daily active users. The raw logs on Brad's private tablet showed fewer than four hundred thousand. Ninety percent of our user base didn't exist. They were bot accounts, carefully managed by a ghost server to simulate engagement.
I felt physically ill. My vision tunneled.
AuraNet wasn't a unicorn startup. It was a hollow shell. It was a massive, orchestrated fraud. And because I was the CFO, my digital signature was stamped on every single financial document certifying those four million users as real. I had unwittingly helped Brad build a paper castle, and Omni Capital was about to buy it for a billion dollars.
If this went through, and Omni discovered the truth, Brad wouldn't be the only one going down. The SEC and the FBI would come for me. I would lose everything. Chloe would be left with nothing.
I frantically scrolled through the tablet, looking for a way to prove I wasn't involved. I opened the maintenance access logs for the ghost server room, hoping to find who actually set up the bots.
There was a fresh entry, logged barely an hour ago. Someone had bypassed the firewalls and downloaded the raw discrepancy data. The user ID was just two initials: L.V.
"I was really hoping you wouldn't find that, David."
I whipped around, nearly dropping the tablet.
Brad was standing in the doorway. Trent and Greg were directly behind him, blocking the only exit. The smart-glass walls of the office suddenly shifted from transparent to a milky, impenetrable white, sealing us off from the rest of the company.
Brad walked slowly toward me, his arrogant smirk returning. He didn't look angry. He looked like a man who had just caught a mouse in a trap.
CHAPTER 2