Chapter 6 - Desperate Measures
By nightfall, David was stranded in a budget motel near JFK airport. His luxury penthouse in Soho had been locked by court order, his company sports car repossessed from the parking garage, and his remaining luggage consisted of a single duffel bag he had managed to grab before security tossed him out.
Chloe had long since abandoned him. The moment she realized the black cards were dead and the Soho penthouse was off-limits, she blocked his number, grabbed her luxury bags, and hailed an Uber, leaving him with the unpaid hotel bar tab.
Sitting on the edge of a stained mattress, David stared at his phone. He had one card left—a forgotten store credit card with a five-hundred-dollar limit. His parents were calling him every two minutes from a roadside diner, screaming for money and accommodation.
Desperate and drowning in humiliation, David decided to resort to blackmail.
He pulled up a secure cloud drive where he had saved copies of confidential Vance Logistics operational files. Months ago, he had quietly copied proprietary supply chain algorithms and trade secrets, planning to sell them to our chief overseas competitor, the Ryker Group, as an insurance policy.
He dialed my private cell number from a burner phone he had bought at a gas station.
I answered on the first ring. “Yes, David?”
“You think you’ve won, don’t you, Eleanor?” he snarled into the receiver, his voice trembling with manic desperation. “You think you can just erase me and walk away? I have the entire core software architecture for Vance Logistics’ automation network. The Ryker Group offered me twenty million dollars for it last month. If you don't unfreeze my accounts, drop the criminal charges, and give me a ten-million-dollar settlement by tomorrow morning, I will upload these files to their public servers and burn your father’s company to the ground!”
I sat in my quiet library, sipping a cup of chamomile tea as I listened to his frantic rant.
“Are you finished?” I asked softly.
“I’m not joking, Eleanor! I will destroy everything!”
“David,” I said with a light laugh that sent a cold shudder down his spine. “Did you really think you were the only one who monitored corporate server logs? The moment you accessed those files six months ago, our cybersecurity team flagged your account. What you downloaded onto that cloud drive isn't our real software architecture.”
David went completely motionless. “What?”
May you like
“It’s a honeypot system,” I explained patiently. “A dummy script embedded with traceable digital watermarks designed specifically to catch corporate espionage. If you attempt to transmit or sell those files to the Ryker Group, you won't just be facing embezzlement charges—you’ll be facing federal cybercrime charges under the Economic Espionage Act. Go ahead, David. Press send. I dare you.”
The line went dead as David dropped the phone onto the floor, realizing that every move he had ever made had been anticipated, mapped, and turned into a trap.
