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“They signed severance agreements.”

“Well, apparently they found a way around them,” Isabella says.

“But they were ironclad. Can we countersue for breach of contract?”

I might regret that we’re being sued, but I don’t regret firing the two of them. The article makes them out to be sacrificial lambs, but they weren't. There’s no one else to blame for the data leak that ended in the botched acquisition. They were negligent and failed to do their jobs.

“It isn't their money, Sebastian,” the Ghost says.

“I tracked the retainer for their legal counsel,” the Ghost continues. “It’s being funneled through a shell company in the Caymans. I’ve been able to trace it back to its ultimate source, a company called Corinth Capital.”

My jaw tightens. They’re the vultures who swooped in to take Anchorstone from us. They’re not content just to beat us, they’re subsidizing a war to dismantle what’s left of our credibility.

“They didn’t just win the bid,” I mutter, scrubbing my hand over my face, “they orchestrated the fall, and now they’re coming back to finish the job and bury the King name.”

Sitting across from me at my desk, Isabella is silent, a frown of concern shadowing her face.

“It gets weirder,” the Ghost says. I can hear the rapid-fire tapping of keys in the background. “I finally cracked the encryption of the entry logs from the night of the leak. You wanted to know whose key was used to bypass the firewall.”

“Yes, was it Vance or Jenkins?”

“Neither one of them. It was no one.”

Isabella’s eyes meet mine.

“Excuse me?” I have to work hard to keep my tone neutral. “How is that possible? Computers don’t hack themselves; someone had to do it.”

A file pops up on the shared screen on my monitor. It’s a string of alphanumeric code that looks like a foreign alphabet to me.

“What am I looking at?”

“It’s the King Corp mainframe. What you’re seeing is every employee’s identifier,” the Ghost explains.

At the tilt of Isabella’s head, I clarify further. “Every employee, from the mailroom to my father, is assigned a unique sixteen-digit hex identifier.”

“Except this key is twenty-four digits,” the Ghost says. “It acted like a master override. And whoever used it went back afterward and overwrote the original entries. These logs have been scrubbed.”

That makes me sit up straight. “A what?”

“A master override. But here’s the kicker,” the Ghost continues. “I went back through twenty years of HR archives and server logs. This number has never been assigned; it doesn’t exist in the system’s history.”

My blood runs cold. If the key wasn’t assigned to a person, it means someone didn’t just break in. They were built into the foundation before the walls ever went up.

“Sebastian?” Isabella’s voice is low.

My attention is fixed on the screen, my thoughts circling like a tornado.

The lawsuit isn’t the threat.

It’s a distraction.

12

ISABELLA

“No matter what the lawsuit is or isn't, we still have to handle it. We have to manage the optics.”

“Don’t use buzzwords with me.” Sebastian’s tone is equal parts annoyed and distracted.