The question was a perfect trap, designed to stain me with complicity regardless of my answer. He expected me to weigh the risks, to choose the path of maximum profit. He expected me to think like him.
And at that moment, I saw the third path. The one he hadn’t considered.
I took a slow breath, meeting his challenging gaze with a calm I didn’t feel.
“Neither,” I said.
A flicker of surprise cut through his composure. “Neither?”
“Leaking the Schmitt data is short-sighted,” I began, my voice cold and analytical, channeling a version of myself that had chaired boardrooms since adolescence. The short-term gain is substantial, but the long-term risk of discovery is too high. "A century-old legacy isn’t built on gambles that could shatter its reputation overnight.”
“So you’re risk-averse,”
