Chapter 5: The Hour They Tried to Erase Me
Arthur checked his watch.
“It’s eleven twenty.”
I took Camille’s phone.
“Who is speaking with Eleanor?”
“Martin Kells, head of information security.”
“Will he follow her order?”
Camille wiped her cheek.
“He follows whoever controls his salary.”
Arthur called Vanguard’s outside counsel.
“We need an emergency preservation notice sent to every server administrator now.”
I pressed the elevator button.
“A notice won’t stop Eleanor.”
Julian blocked the doors.
“You are not returning to the executive floor.”
“Your mother ordered company evidence erased.”
“That recording could have been edited.”
Camille flinched.
“You know her voice.”
“I also know you enjoy attention.”
Camille’s shoulders folded inward.
I stepped between them.
“She brought us proof.
What have you brought besides excuses?”
Julian looked at me.
“If you force your way upstairs, security will remove you.”
“Then come with us.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
Arthur’s phone rang.
He listened for several seconds, then lowered it.
“Martin has already shut down the archive.”
Eleanor emerged from the boardroom carrying her handbag.
“There.
The company systems are protected.”
“Protected from what?” I asked.
“The truth?”
“From a bitter former spouse.”
Camille lifted her phone.
“I recorded you.”
For the first time, Eleanor lost her color.
“You foolish girl.”
“You told Martin to use Arthur’s signature.”
“Give me that phone.”
“No.”
Eleanor seized Camille’s wrist, but I pulled her hand away.
“Touch her again, and everyone in this building will see the recording before lunch.”
Eleanor straightened her sleeve.
“Camille, your apartment, your allowance, and your place in the family foundation all depend on me.”
Camille’s fingers trembled around the phone.
“You always say that,” she whispered.
“Because it remains true.”
Camille looked at me, then pressed SEND.
“Not anymore.”
Arthur’s phone chimed as the recording arrived.
He forwarded it to counsel while Eleanor stared at her daughter.
“You will regret this.”
“I already regret last night.”
Eleanor walked away, but her heels struck the floor too quickly to look calm.
By one o’clock, Martin confirmed that the main archive had been wiped.
Helen Mercer called an emergency board session and refused to explain why she had supported Julian.
“Tell me the truth,” I said when she arrived.
Helen closed the glass door.
“Eleanor threatened to cancel the employee pension contribution if I voted with you.”
“So you helped her.”
“I bought twelve hours.”
She placed a small brass key on the table.
“What does that open?” Arthur asked.
“The founder’s document cabinet at the estate.
Eleanor keeps the offline backup there because she never trusted cloud storage.”
I set my encrypted drive beside the key.
“This contains a mirror of the financial archive, but it needs a second encryption key.”
Helen nodded toward the brass key.
“And that second key is in the cabinet.”
Julian stared at her.
“You planned this with Leah?”
“No.
I planned to protect eight hundred employees from your mother.”
My laptop lit up with a news alert.
The headline called me a disgruntled ex-wife accused of taking Vanguard secrets.
Arthur read it over my shoulder.
“Eleanor leaked the court filing.”
A second notification followed.
Vanguard’s bank had suspended recognition of the Sutton voting conversion until the court ruled.
Julian slowly took his seat at the head of the table.
“Without those votes, my mother still controls the board.”
May you like
Eleanor appeared in the doorway.
“And by the time Leah reaches that cabinet,” she said, “there will be nothing left inside.”
