Chapter 6 No.6

The guest room at the Sterling penthouse was dark, lit only by the glow of three laptop screens arranged in a semi-circle on the desk. Leo and Mia were asleep in the bed, their breathing soft and rhythmic.

Imogen sat in the ergonomic chair, her legs pulled up to her chest. She had shed the pink dress and was wearing a black hoodie, the hood pulled up. She pushed her anti-blue light glasses up her nose.

"Okay, Branson," she muttered. "You want to play hardball? Let's play."

If she couldn't buy the painting, she would force him to move it. She needed to know where he was taking it.

Her fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard. The sound was a rapid-fire staccato, like rain on a tin roof.

Connecting to a dark web forum for corporate espionage...

Posting an anonymous, encrypted bounty...

Across the city, in the server room of the Reeves tower, everything was quiet.

Branson was just walking into his home office when his phone rang. It was his Chief Security Officer.

"Sir, we have a situation. Not a breach. It's chatter. A high-value, anonymous bounty just appeared on the 'Serpent's Nest' forum. It's for the transport schedule and destination of 'Asset M.O.' That's us. The Midnight Orchid."

Branson's eyes went cold. He didn't sit down. He walked straight to his own terminal-a beast of a machine with four monitors. He cracked his knuckles. This wasn't a brute-force attack; it was a strategic leak, designed to make others do the dirty work.

He logged in. He saw the bounty post. It was elegant. Untraceable.

"Got you," he whispered.

He initiated a counter-intelligence operation. He instructed his team to leak a fake transport schedule to a known weak link in their logistics chain, a driver with a gambling problem.

Imogen saw the intel appear from one of her sources an hour later. She paused. It was too easy.

"Nice try," she said, popping a lollipop into her mouth. "But I don't eat garbage."

She ignored the fake schedule and launched a side-channel attack. Not on his servers, but on his personnel. She cross-referenced the Reeves Group's employee list with publicly available data on financial distress.

"Hello, operator," she typed into a secure message to Sasha. "Find me everyone at Reeves Logistics with a mortgage in default or a recent lien against their property."

Branson saw the fake intel get picked up. He felt a moment of satisfaction. He was setting a trap.

Suddenly, his personal phone buzzed. It was a notification from a financial news alert he subscribed to.

He opened it. A small, independent financial blog-one known for its aggressive investigative journalism-had just published an article.

The headline read: "Reeves Group's $50M Art Purchase: Visionary Move or Desperate Gamble to Hide Underwater Assets?"

The article was filled with sophisticated-sounding speculation, just enough to be plausible, questioning the company's liquidity and suggesting the purchase was a vanity project to distract from internal problems. It was designed to spook the board and the shareholders.

Branson stared at the screen. A laugh bubbled up in his chest, surprising him. It wasn't a hack. It was a targeted psychological operation. "You brat."

The author of the article was anonymous. The source was listed as "a concerned party close to the board."

Imogen leaned back in her chair, exhaling a long breath. She hadn't got the logistics, but she had sent a message. She wasn't going away.

She looked over at the twins. They shifted in their sleep, murmuring. Imogen's smile faded. The fun was over. She still didn't have the ledger.

The next morning, Branson stood in his office, looking out at the skyline. Quentin walked in, looking pale.

"The website is fine, sir. But the press... the article is being picked up by mainstream outlets. The board is calling."

"I know," Branson said. He turned around. "I want a list of every financial analyst and corporate saboteur known for this kind of move. Filter for females. And filter for..." He paused, remembering the confrontation in the hallway. "Someone with connections to the art world and a taste for blood."