The sun never rose for Veloria that morning.
At exactly 5:43 AM, Aruna's phone vibrated violently on her nightstand. Half-asleep, she reached for it and unlocked the screen. Dozens no, hundreds of notifications poured in like a digital avalanche.
The subject lines all screamed the same thing:
"Data Breach at Veloria: Millions of User Records Compromised."
"Former Unicorn Startup Veloria Faces Security Nightmare."
"Was This the Work of an Insider?"
Aruna froze.
Her breath caught in her throat.
The nightmare she had prepared for feared was no longer creeping in shadows.
It was here.
By 6:30 AM, the entire leadership team was gathered in the crisis room.
The blinds were drawn. The air was thick with tension, stale coffee, and the unspoken dread of responsibility.
"We've confirmed a breach," Reza reported, his voice flat. "Over two million records accessed and exported. Emails, purchase history, some learning performance data... nothing financial, but still bad."
"Really bad," Naya added grimly. "Users are already talking about it on Social Media. Parents, teachers, partners they're furious. And the hashtags are trending."
#VeloriaBetrayed
#TrustBroken
#DeleteVeloria
Vincent sat in the corner, perfectly composed.
He played the role flawlessly wide-eyed concern, furrowed brow, the occasional supportive nod.
But inside?
He was smiling.
Giselle's strike was precise. Devastating.
And irreversible.
"What's the timeline of the breach?" Aruna asked.
Reza tapped on the keyboard, pulling up logs. "Earliest signs begin last Thursday. System manipulation started using admin-level credentials tied to..."
A pause.
Naya leaned forward.
"...to Nadia's account," Reza finished.
Murmurs erupted in the room.
Vincent quietly tilted his head, pretending to be surprised but not too surprised.
Aruna said nothing. She simply watched.
Not the screen. Not the data.
By noon, the Veloria press team was overwhelmed.
Their holding statement was picked apart within minutes. Users demanded transparency, apologies, and action not sanitized PR.
News outlets dug deeper, questioning how a company with such a forward-thinking image could allow such a fundamental lapse in cybersecurity.
One article featured a screenshot from an anonymous source within Veloria.
A dashboard with exposed user data. Internal admin tools.
The watermark read "confidential product dev."
The implication was damning.
Even worse, the tone wasn't corporate sabotage.
It looked like incompetence.
And that, to investors, was even more lethal.
Calls from investors began flooding in.
One after another, Aruna fielded them. Silent fury, disappointment, and threats of divestment.
"We believed in Veloria because we believed in you," said one of their early Series A backers. "Now, it's clear something is fundamentally broken in your leadership chain."
She wanted to scream.
To tell them they had been betrayed by someone else not her.
But she couldn't.
Not yet.
She had no proof. No confession. No smoking gun.
Just theories. Suspicions. Patterns.
And a clock that was running out.
Meanwhile, Nadia sat alone in the HR conference room.
She had been locked out of every system. Her access revoked. Her name quietly circulated as the likely "culprit."
She was confused. Terrified. Furious.
"I didn't do this," she whispered, again and again. "I didn't "
No one listened.
No one dared to.
They were too busy managing fire to look for the real arsonist.
Giselle watched it all unfold from a penthouse suite in Singapore, sipping cold brew as she flipped between news reports
She had struck with surgical elegance.
And now, Veloria bled.
"I didn't need to kill her company," she mused aloud, to no one in particular. "I just had to let it drown in its own illusions."
She closed her laptop and walked to the balcony, watching the city wake beneath her.
Her next move was already underway.
Back at Veloria, Reza pulled Aruna aside.
"There's something strange," he said, voice low. "Nadia's account was used, yes but the IP access logs were spoofed. Too clean. Too... deliberate."
Aruna's eyes lit with cautious fire. "Meaning?"
"Meaning someone wanted us to believe it was her."
Aruna exhaled sharply. "Vincent."
Reza hesitated. "You're sure?"
"No. But I can feel it."
She walked back into the conference room and faced the team.
"We're not out of this. But we're not going to roll over and die."
Heads turned. Eyes narrowed.
"I want a full internal investigation. Discreet. Third-party. I want every data trail mapped, every internal comms audit processed. If someone inside did this, we will find them."
"And if it was someone inside?" Naya asked.
Aruna's voice was colder than steel.
"Then we deal with them. Publicly."
Vincent gave the faintest nod of approval.
She was doing exactly what he wanted lighting her own house on fire.
He just needed to stay a little longer, pretend a little harder, until Giselle gave the final signal.
Then he'd vanish.
With everything.
That evening, Aruna sat alone in her office, watching the skyline burn in the reflection of her window.
Veloria was bleeding.
The public fallout was just beginning.
The media storm would grow.
Regulators would come knocking.
And yet... in her gut, she knew this wasn't the end.
It was the beginning of war.
But not the kind fought with code or capital.
This war was personal.
She leaned forward, opened a secure folder on her laptop the one that tracked every anomaly in Vincent's behavior over the last month. Every delay, every file access, every script change he tried to bury.
She wasn't just going to expose the traitor.
She was going to dismantle him.
Piece by piece.