Chapter 5 - The Snake's Venom
The security guards escorted Grant from the building, but as he was led out, he leaned close to me, his voice a low hiss that only I could hear.
“You think you’ve won, Evelyn?” he whispered. “You think this ends with a board vote? You don't know half of what I’ve done. Aegis already has the decryption keys. Even if you throw me in jail, your company is dead.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
I sat back down, my heart hammering against my ribs. He was bluffing. He had to be bluffing.
“Daniel,” I said, my voice tight. “Check the main server logs. Now.”
Daniel’s fingers flew across his tablet. Within minutes, the color drained from his face.
“He’s not lying,” Daniel said, his voice shaking.
“An external download was initiated from Grant’s administrative account at 11:45 PM last night—right around the time you were being admitted to the hospital. It’s our entire genomic sequencing database for the Vane-Project. The core technology behind our $80 million merger.”
“Can we block it?” Ruth asked.
“It’s already gone,” Daniel said, looking up at me with genuine dread. “It was uploaded to a secure, anonymous cloud server. The decryption key was split into two parts. Grant has one. The other was sent to an IP address associated with Aegis Pharma’s headquarters in Zurich.”
The boardroom, which had felt like a place of triumph only moments ago, suddenly felt like a tomb.
If Aegis Pharma decrypted that data, they could file for international patents before we could complete our merger. The merger would collapse, our investors would pull out, and Whitmore Biologics would be forced into bankruptcy within months.
“He didn't just want to steal the company,” I said, the cold realization washing over me. “He wanted to burn it to the ground if he couldn't have it.”
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“We need that decryption key,” Ruth said. “And we only have one way to get it.”
“Vanessa,” I said.
