Chapter Nineteen
1160 Words
Chapter Nineteen
(Nia’s POV)
The boardroom exploded into chaos.
“The core intel leaked?” Mr. Harrington repeated. “How much?”
“We’re still checking,” she said. “IT flagged external activity fifteen minutes ago. The files are already circulating through one of the competitor forums.”
My stomach tightened.
The software had been months of work.
It could cost me everything.
I pushed my chair back and stood.
“Lock down external access,” I said.
My assistant blinked. “Ms. Caldwell?”
“Tell IT to freeze every credential issued in the last thirty days. Legal needs a breach notice drafted but not released until I approve it. Pull access logs, download history, and every transfer made from the software division this week.”
The board stared at me.
I ignored them.
“Where’s Callum?”
“Outside,” she said.
“Get him. And tell him I need the finance exposure on this within the hour.”
She nodded and rushed out.
Behind me, Mr. Harrington muttered something about instability.
I turned slowly. “If anyone wants to use this as proof I can’t lead, wait until I’m done fixing it.”
I left the boardroom.
By the time I reached my office, my phone was already full of messages.
A single message from Callum. ‘I’m on it.’
Then my office door opened.
I looked up.
Sienna walked in.
She walked in like she had every right to stand in my office.
“Well,” she said. “This is embarrassing.”
I set my phone down. “Get out.”
Her smile widened. “That’s not very nice. I came to see if you needed help.”
“You don’t know how to help anyone unless it benefits you.”
She stepped closer to my desk. “Poor Nia. One scandal in the morning, one company disaster by noon. It must be exhausting watching everything slip out of your hands.”
My fingers curled against the edge of the desk.
“You seem happy.”
“I’m just concerned.”
“You’re lying.”
Her eyes brightened.
For a second, the mask slipped.
“You really thought you could keep all of this?” she asked. “The company. Adrian. Mom and Dad. You thought because they found you, everything I had would just become yours.”
I stood.
“It did become mine.”
Her face twisted.
I smiled then, small and sharp. “And if you’re still chasing after it, that only proves what you’re worth, Sienna. My leftovers.”
She went still.
Then rage flashed across her face.
“Leftovers?” she snapped. “You’re the one living off leftovers. You left Adrian, and now you have nothing. No husband. No home. No family standing behind you. And after this leak, you won’t even have that CEO chair you love pretending you earned.”
My heartbeat slowed.
I stared at her.
“You’re the one who leaked the information.”
“So, what if I did? You can’t do anything about it.” She gloated.
“You don’t know what I’m capable of Sienna. Want to know what I’m going to do to you?”
Sienna’s lips parted.
Before she could answer, a voice cut through the room.
“Nia?”
Adrian’s voice came through the other side of the office door.
Sienna dropped to her knees.
I stared at her.
She actually dropped to her knees on my office floor, hands clasped in front of her, tears sliding down her face.
“Nia, please,” she cried. “Let me help. I know you’re angry, but I can help fix the code. I only wanted to help.”
Adrian moved instantly.
He crossed the room and helped her up.
Sienna turned into him as if she had been wounded, her fingers clutching his shirt.
“I just wanted to help Nia with the leak,” she whispered. “But she pushed me and told me to get out. I don’t blame her, Adrian. She’s, my sister. I could never blame her.”
A laugh left me before I could stop it.
It sounded harsh even to my own ears.
Adrian looked at me. “Why Nia?”
“There it is,” I said.
His jaw tightened. “Nia.”
I looked at Sienna. “Drop the act. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Sienna cried harder and pressed her face against Adrian’s chest.
“Apologize to her,” Adrian said.
I stared at him.
He said it as if I was a child who had misbehaved.
“You’re trespassing,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“You weren’t invited in. Neither was she.”
“I came to offer help.”
“What do you want in return?”
Sienna’s sobs quieted.
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“My top IT specialist can contain the leak,” he said. “Blackwood Group has the resources to bury this.”
“How generous.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I folded my arms. “What do you want?”
His gaze dropped briefly to my stomach.
Then returned to my face.
“Take back the divorce. Come home. End this pregnancy.”
The room went silent.
Even Sienna stopped breathing for a second.
He had not come to help me.
He had come to bargain.
I chuckled and shook my head.
“I don’t need help from either of you.”
“Nia,” Adrian warned.
But I was already walking past them.
Sienna’s fingers tightened around his sleeve as I passed. I did not look at her.
I did not look at him either.
If I did, I might remember the man I had once loved.
And I had work to do.
The IT department was in full panic when I arrived. Screens were lit with access logs, error codes, and breach alerts. Three engineers were talking over each other while the department head looked seconds away from losing consciousness.
“Move,” I said.
They all turned.
“Ms. Caldwell, we’re handling it.”
“No, you’re reacting. Move.”
The nearest engineer stepped aside.
I sat at the terminal and pulled up the access trail.
Lines of code filled the screen.
For a moment, the room faded.
All of it disappeared.
This, I understood.
Before the Caldwell’s found me, before anyone called me an heiress, I had survived by being useful. Scholarships. Night classes. Freelance work no one in this family had ever asked about.
They assumed I was uneducated.
They assumed I was helpless because I had been quiet.
I found the breach path in six minutes.
By nine, I had isolated the compromised credential.
By twelve, I had closed the external access point and trapped the outgoing mirror link.
Someone behind me whispered, “How did she do…”
“Because I built the original security framework,” I said.
- Writer
