Chapter 5 - Unraveling the Root Access
I plugged the metal flash drive into my isolated offline terminal, bypassing Veyra’s corporate network entirely to avoid triggering any automated security alerts that Richard or his lingering allies might have set up. The screen flickered to life, displaying a complex tree of encrypted directory logs, financial wire transfers, and internal system communication transcripts dating back over two years.
Julian stood behind my chair, pointing to a specific sequence of encrypted timestamps.
“Look right here,” Julian said, tapping the glass screen. “This is the exact night Daniel was hospitalized for his final respiratory failure. While he was unconscious in the ICU, someone used his personal biometric keycard to log into the main server room on level B4 and download the entire neural-net source code for our primary intelligence engine.”
My eyes scanned the hex code and access logs, my stomach tightening into a hard knot of fury. The biometric keycard used was marked with serial number VC-03—a master card that had been officially registered to Evelyn Cole during her brief stint as an independent corporate governance consultant three years prior.
“She didn’t just want to control Veyra,” I whispered, the realization dawning with terrifying clarity. “She wanted to hollow it out completely. Once the merger with Horizon went through, they were going to liquidate the physical assets, strip the patents, and leave me holding an empty corporate shell burdened with billions in assumed debt.”
“And they would have gotten away with it,” Julian said, pulling up a secondary file containing encrypted email chains. “If you hadn’t walked out of that wedding and triggered the Bellweather trust, the merger documents were scheduled to be finalized by automatic digital signature at midnight tonight. The proxy Adrian made you sign would have given him the legal authority to ratify the asset transfer retroactively, rendering Daniel’s succession agreement completely void under corporate indemnity laws.”
I stared at the screen, feeling a cold wave of realization wash over me. The wedding wasn’t just a personal betrayal or a power grab for voting shares; it was the final, legally airtight trap designed to sign away my entire life’s work under the guise of marital unity.
“We need to take this to federal prosecutors immediately,” I said, reaching for my phone.
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“Prosecutors won’t act fast enough,” Julian warned, catching my wrist gently. “Richard still has three loyal allies sitting on the federal district compliance board, and Evelyn has deep political connections in the state legislature. If we go through official legal channels alone, they’ll get wind of the warrant before the servers are seized, and they’ll remotely wipe the primary database.”
“Then we don’t use official channels first,” I said, my eyes narrowing as a cold, calculated plan began to form in my mind. “We cut off their digital oxygen supply before they even realize the network has locked them out.”
