Chapter 8 - The Ghost Protocol
I didn't tell Elias immediately. I had learned my lesson about trusting sharks. I needed to ensure that when the guillotine fell on Claire, I was the one holding the rope.
I spent the next forty-eight hours crafting a highly aggressive, self-replicating digital payload. It was designed to slip through that legacy backdoor, bypass her new military-grade firewalls, and completely drain the operational capital of her flagship holding company. But I added a secondary protocol. Once the money was diverted, the payload would mask its origin, making it look like a catastrophic internal failure. Claire wouldn't just lose her money; she would lose her reputation. The board that had eagerly embraced her would turn on her like starving wolves.
I finally called Elias.
"I have the key," I told him, staring at the blinking cursor on my monitor. "But I don't execute it from a basement in Queens. I want to look her in the eyes when her world burns down."
Elias chuckled, a dry, rasping sound over the line. "She is hosting the Global Innovators Summit at the Plaza Hotel tomorrow night. I secured an anonymous vendor pass for you. Don't disappoint me, Daniel. Or the feds won't be the ones you need to hide from."
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I hung up the phone, a twisted, desperate smile pulling at my lips. For months, I had been the punchline of the corporate world. I had been the arrogant fool who let a queen slip through his fingers and steal his crown.
But the game wasn't over. Claire thought she had buried me. She didn't realize that in the dark, seeds begin to grow. I packed my laptop into a sleek black briefcase. I was going to walk into her coronation, and I was going to turn it into a funeral.
