Chapter 7 - The Honey TrapThat evening, Thomas and I were sitting on the terrace of my Malibu home, a gentle sea breeze blowing off the Pacific. He was sketching a breathtaking architectural design on his tablet, perfectly content in the silence.
I told him about the Nevada IP address and Julian’s desperate attempt to sabotage my supply chain. Thomas didn't react with aggressive bravado or try to 'fix' the problem for me. Instead, he set his stylus down and looked at me with deep, analytical respect.
“Julian is reckless, but he’s not acting alone,” Thomas observed, pouring us both a glass of Cabernet. “If he’s using a shell company, they need insider information to know exactly which supply chains to target. You have a leak, Evelyn.”
I nodded slowly. “I know. I ran an internal audit this afternoon. It’s a junior financial analyst named Marcus. He started three months ago. I cross-referenced his background; he went to the same fraternity as Julian’s cousins.”
Thomas smiled, a glint of genuine admiration in his eyes. “So, you’re going to fire him?”
“Absolutely not,” I said, taking a sip of the dark red wine. “If I fire him, Julian finds another way in. A known mole is the most valuable asset a CEO can have. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to make sure Marcus accidentally 'discovers' a highly confidential file outlining a fake, billion-dollar merger we are supposedly planning with a European auto manufacturer.”
Thomas chuckled softly, raising his glass in a toast. “You are going to feed them poisoned data.”
“I’m going to let them dig their own graves,” I corrected. “Julian wants to play corporate espionage? I’m going to show him exactly why I run the board.”
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The next day, the trap was set. I left the encrypted folder open on a secure server just long enough for Marcus’s login credentials to access it. Within two hours, the data was copied. By noon, the shell company in Nevada had aggressively leveraged everything they had to buy stock in the European manufacturer, betting heavily on the fake merger.
The stage was set for total annihilation.
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