Chapter 6 - The Sabotage Attempt
Two weeks after the disaster in family court, David’s world was crumbling at an alarming rate.
His software company, Miller Tech Solutions, was bleeding cash. Without Arthur Montgomery’s two-million-dollar investment, David couldn't cover his payroll or pay his office rent in the downtown financial district. His bank accounts were frozen due to the pending retroactive child support audit, and his mother, Beatrice, was screaming at him daily about the impending foreclosure on her suburban home.
Desperation makes weak men dangerous.
Sitting in his dim, empty executive office late at night, surrounded by unpaid bills and eviction notices, David looked at a blueprints folder sitting on his desk. It was an leaked early tender proposal for the city's fifteen-million-dollar waterfront development project—the very project that Vance & Co. Designs had just won.
If Vance & Co. failed to deliver their structural design models to the City Planning Board by Friday at 5:00 p.m., they would be in breach of contract. A penalty clause would trigger an immediate five-million-dollar fine, revoking their master license and throwing Emily’s business into financial chaos.
David pulled out a cheap burner phone from his drawer, dialing a number he hadn't used in three years.
"Frank?" David said into the receiver, his voice tight and shaky. "It’s David Miller."
"David?" came the rough, gravelly voice of Frank Mercer—a disgraced former IT administrator who had been fired from Emily’s firm two years ago for corporate misconduct. "What do you want?"
"I know you still have the override passcodes for Vance & Co.’s cloud design servers," David said, his eyes narrowing in the dim office light. "The ones you created before they escorted you off the property."
Frank let out a low, bitter laugh. "Those passcodes are useless, David. She upgraded her cybersecurity last year."
"Not on her backup physical server in the basement storage facility on 4th Street," David countered, a desperate, malicious smile spreading across his face. "I know how she operates. She keeps an off-grid local RAID array there for raw CAD files. I’ll pay you fifty thousand dollars—cash—if you wipe those architectural models before Friday morning."
Frank went quiet on the line for five long seconds. "Fifty grand? You don't have fifty grand, David. Everyone in town knows Montgomery pulled out of your firm."
"I have my mother’s jewelry collection," David lied smoothly, leaning over his desk. "It’s worth eighty thousand at auction. You wipe those files, force her to default on the city contract, and the money is yours by noon on Friday."
"Send me the location," Frank growled. "Consider it done."
May you like
David hung up the burner phone, tossing it onto the desk. He leaned back in his leather chair, a slow, toxic smirk returning to his face for the first time in weeks.
"You thought you were smarter than me, Emily," David whispered into the quiet room. "You brought those kids to my wedding to ruin my life. Now I’m going to watch your precious company burn to the ground."
