Chapter 3
I was reviewing the company's quarterly finances when Miranda knocked on my office door.
"Come in," I called, not looking up from the spreadsheets on my screen.
"Ellianna, I need you to see something," Miranda said, her voice unusually tense.
She placed a folder on my desk and opened it to a series of highlighted expense reports.
"I was going through the project budgets to cut any James-related expenses," she explained, "but these numbers don't add up."
I studied the pages, my finger tracing the columns of figures. "The margins on the Westlake project are off by nearly twenty percent."
"Exactly." Miranda pulled up a chair beside me. "And it's not just Westlake. Look at these."
She flipped to another page. The discrepancies were subtle but unmistakable once you knew what to look for.
"Someone's been siphoning information to competitors," I murmured, the realization settling like ice in my stomach.
Miranda nodded grimly. "And look who had access to all these accounts."
She didn't need to say the name.
---
"James Wheeler accessed these files at 2:17 AM on March 12th," Daniel Hayes, our forensic accountant, pointed to the screen. "Then again at 3:42 AM on March 29th."
We were in the conference room with our legal team, surrounded by printouts and coffee cups. It was 11 PM, but nobody was thinking about leaving.
"He wasn't just looking," I said, scanning the report. "He was copying entire client lists."
"And strategic plans," added Victoria, our head counsel. "The timing matches perfectly with when our competitors started undercutting our proposals."
I felt sick. Not just angry—physically ill. For months, James had been selling us out from the inside.
"How much?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
Daniel adjusted his glasses. "Over two hundred thousand dollars in compromised deals and stolen intellectual property. And that's just what we can prove so far."
The room fell silent. That amount made it a federal crime.
"We need more," I said finally. "I want every email, every file, every keystroke he ever made on company equipment."
The team nodded. This was war.
---
The evidence trail was damning. James had been thorough in his betrayal, but he'd also been careless.
"He forwarded confidential emails to his personal account," Miranda reported the next morning, dark circles under her eyes from the all-night investigation. "Look at this one—he literally wrote 'this will hurt Ellianna's team' in the subject line."
I read the email, feeling my jaw tighten with each word.
"And here," Miranda continued, pulling up security footage on her laptop. "This is him photographing documents during his 'late-night work sessions.'"
The video showed James casually holding his phone over sensitive proposals, smiling slightly as he worked.
"He thought he was untouchable," I said quietly.
"The worst part," Miranda hesitated, "is that he started doing this months ago. Before you broke up with him."
I closed my eyes briefly. So it hadn't been about Nyomi after all. Not really. James had been planning to betray me from the beginning.
---
"He's here again," Miranda said, peering through the blinds of my office window toward the building across the street.
I didn't need to ask who she meant. James and Nyomi had been making a spectacle of themselves at Canlis, the upscale restaurant where my colleagues often dined.
"Third time this week," I noted dryly.
"They're not exactly subtle," Miranda observed. "Nyomi's wearing that diamond bracelet she posted about yesterday."
I glanced at the Instagram photo Miranda had screenshotted. Nyomi's wrist sparkled with a Cartier bracelet I recognized immediately—James had "given" it to me last Christmas, though I'd later discovered he'd charged it to the company account.
"Look at her caption," Miranda read aloud: "'When you upgrade from basic to premium. #newbeginnings #worthit'."
The photo showed them at a corner table, champagne glasses raised in a toast. The location tag was deliberate—a restaurant I frequented.
"She's tagged three of your board members in the comments," Miranda added.
I stared at the image, at Nyomi's triumphant smile and James's possessive hand on her waist. They thought they'd won.
"Miranda," I said slowly, "get Daniel Hayes on the phone. Tell him I'm ready to move forward with charges."
As Miranda hurried out, I turned back to my computer, pulling up the folder of evidence we'd compiled. James had stolen from me, betrayed me, and now he was flaunting it.
He thought he could humiliate me publicly while profiting from my company's secrets.
He was about to learn how wrong he was.
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