POV Adrian
“We’ll reconvene when we have actual fucking data instead of… whatever this trainwreck is.”
Brittany’s face goes full deer-in-headlights, and honestly? Good. The Q4 deck has been bleeding out since Isabella vanished, and I’m about done pretending this isn’t a complete shitshow.
“But the projections are solid,” she blathers, waving at charts that look like a toddler’s finger painting. “It’s just data latency—”
“Data latency.” I let that bullshit excuse hang in the air. “Sure, Brittany. Data latency.”
Eyes drop. Chairs scrape. The room empties faster than a sinking ship, and I’m left staring at the wreckage of what should have been a routine quarterly review. When Isabella runs these meetings, they move with surgical precision. Today feels like watching a train derail in slow motion.
Irritation burning hot in my chest, I cut across the bullpen toward Isabella’s workstation. Maybe she left notes. Maybe there’s a backup plan. Maybe—
What the actual fuck.
Her desk looks like it got hit by a digital tornado. Isabella’s workspace is normally so pristine it could pass military inspection, but this? Duplicated folders everywhere, files renamed with random characters, shortcuts scattered like confetti. There’s even a coffee ring on her monitor that definitely wasn’t there this morning.
I try muscle memory—vendor compliance memo should be three clicks deep. Nothing. The R&D budget she prepped yesterday? Vanished into the digital ether.
My phone’s in my hand before I consciously decide to call her.
She answers on the second ring, breath coming short. “What.”
“Your sudden departure has set fires.” I am annoyed, mostly because I cannot cope without her. “Schedule collisions, missing files, and the indecency of a private photo splashed across our corporate screen. When exactly will you return and work harder?”
“I told you I am dealing with a medical emergency.” Professional. Clipped. The tone she uses when she’s two seconds from hanging up on someone.
“Yes, but our clients need—”
The line goes dead.
I stand there holding my phone like an idiot, staring at the chaos she supposedly left behind. Something’s wrong. Isabella doesn’t do chaos. Entropy doesn’t just bloom around her by accident—it’s like expecting the sun to rise in the west.
Back in my office, that nagging doubt won’t shut up. I punch Security’s extension.
“Kaito? I need InfoSec up here. Now.”
Five minutes later, I’m watching Kaito’s fingers fly across his laptop like he’s conducting a digital orchestra. “Her cloud account pinged at 2:13 AM from a guest network IP,” he says, not looking up. “Then again via USB mount on her workstation around the same time.”
“Someone else was using her credentials?”
“Gets better.” He pulls up corridor footage. “Noah Cooper from Sales Ops, leaving the floor after midnight with a flash drive.”
Noah fucking Cooper. Kid’s barely old enough to drink legally, and he’s running digital black ops on my best analyst as my secretary.
“The image in the presentation?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“Linked from a private folder accessed under her credentials. This wasn't a user error, Adrian. This was deliberate.”
I issue the orders without theatrics because that’s how you handle corporate sabotage: suspend Noah’s access, administrative leave, formal inquiry. Whether he had help remains to be seen, but the immediate facts are crystal clear.
The memory of my phone call tastes like ash in my mouth. I basically accused her of incompetence while she was dealing with a family crisis and some junior asshole was systematically destroying her professional reputation.
Fixing the problem feels insufficient. Like putting a band-aid on a severed artery.
I set a reminder to pick up a certificate to that downtown spa—the one executives escape to after brutal board meetings. No corporate branding, and when I hand it to her—when I apologize—the card will read: “For when you need an hour back.”
The apology will be private, door closed, and I’ll say the words without hedging.
Dusk is climbing the glass outside my window, and the office has that particular quiet that only happens when your most competent employee isn’t there. It’s not silence—it’s the absence of someone who makes everything else work better.
Apologies aren’t exactly Marlowe Enterprises currency. We deal in results, not feelings. But something steadier than policy is taking the wheel here: the simple admission that I was wrong, and the resolve to say it to her face.
For the first time in longer than I care to admit, owning a mistake doesn’t feel like weakness. It feels like the kind of leadership that actually matters—the kind that recognizes when your best people are under attack and responds accordingly.
I lean back in my chair, watching the city lights flicker to life below. Tomorrow, I’ll make this right. Not because the company needs Isabella back—though it absolutely does—but because she deserves better than the shit show we put her through.