Chapter 16 - The Corporate Sabotage
While my personal life was finding a strange, fragile equilibrium, the business world was quietly preparing for a storm.
In late January, Wellington Industries’ legal department flagged an unusual surge in hostile stock acquisitions originating from a shell corporation registered in Zurich. The entity was slowly buying up minority shares of our green-energy subsidiary, attempting to force a disruptive restructuring vote before the spring board meeting.
Marcus called an emergency executive session in the top-floor boardroom.
"Who’s behind the Zurich proxy?" Julian asked, tapping away at his tablet, pulling up a complex web of financial routing algorithms on the massive central screen. "The paper trail is heavily encrypted, but the transaction signatures look identical to the ones Arthur Pendelton used before his indictment."
I leaned forward, studying the incoming metadata streams. Something about the digital footprint felt disturbingly familiar—clean, precise, and vindictive.
"It’s not Arthur," I said, my eyes narrowing as I spotted a recurring accounting code hidden within the transaction ledgers. "Arthur was sloppy. This is corporate sniper work."
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"Then who?" Marcus asked, his jaw tightening.
"Elena," I said, naming Marcus’s disgraced sister who had been ousted the previous year. "She’s been biding her time in Europe, pooling what remains of her offshore accounts to launch one final retaliatory strike against the foundation."
