Chapter 12 - The Digital BloodhoundTo fight an enemy who has weaponized data against you, you cannot stay within the jurisdiction of their trap. You must sever the puppet strings from the source.
By midnight, David and I were thirty thousand feet in the air, cutting through the dark sky aboard our private Gulfstream toward San Francisco. The jet’s cabin was a glowing, high-tech war room. Laptops littered the conference table, and digital schematics illuminated the leather walls.
"Julian Vance isn't doing this just for revenge," Emily, my COO, reported via an encrypted satellite link, projecting a web of international corporate structures onto the main screen. "He’s backed into a corner. Aegis Data Solutions is under investigation by the European Union for illegal data harvesting. He owes hundreds of millions in impending fines. He needs your algorithms to blind the EU regulators and hide his illicit data streams."
"He engineered this whistleblower suit against me to create immediate leverage," David growled, reviewing the forged steel manifests. "He expects us to panic, hand over the tech to avoid prison, and use our legitimate billions to cover his tracks."
"He used a corrupt former federal prosecutor named Thomas Sterling to plant the forged ledgers in the DOJ database," Emily added.
"So we don't just have to beat Julian," I said, leaning forward, resting a hand protectively over my stomach. "We have to break the man inside the justice system who gave him the keys."
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"Julian is hosting a closed-door tech summit at the Palace of Fine Arts tomorrow night," David noted on the screen. "He’s pitching his 'new' algorithmic capabilities to secure bridge loans from Asian tech conglomerates."
"He’s selling our empire before he even steals it," I smiled—a cold, razor-sharp expression. "David, have our tailors meet us at the tarmac. We are going to crash a party."
