3 days before:
Time was her enemy. But fear… fear was her fuel.
Erin sat alone in her office, the door locked, the lights dimmed, the world outside muffled. A storm of thoughts raged inside her — accusations, betrayal, humiliation. But louder than any of those was the ticking clock. Three days. That's all she had.
Three days to clean up a mess she didn't make.
Three days to prove her innocence when the world had already branded her guilty.
Three days to deliver a proposal that could restore the Volkov name — and save her life.
Her hands hovered over the keyboard, motionless at first. She stared at the blinking cursor like it was mocking her.
This wasn't just about a presentation.
It was about survival.
And she wasn't going to die for something she didn't do.
With a deep breath, she sat back and opened the files again — not the old ones. Those were compromised. She had deleted every trace of them, burned them metaphorically and literally from the system, so no one could accuse her of tampering. She would rebuild from scratch.
She didn't sleep.
She didn't eat.
Coffee and sheer kept her upright. She worked in silence, speaking only to herself — whispering corrections, second-guessing decisions, redrafting visuals, replacing stats with updated market data.
She reimagined everything — restructured the format, retargeted the demographics, redefined the partnership's long-term goals.
And she improved it.
Erin didn't just match the stolen proposal — she made something better. Sharper. Bolder. More forward-thinking. She tied in the Volkov legacy, the rising firm's innovation, and an expansion plan that positioned them not just as pharmaceutical partners, but as co-pioneers of a sustainable healthcare revolution.
She knew the Volkov standards. She knew their language. But more importantly — she had come to know Xander.
She anticipated every question he would ask. Every doubt he might raise. And she answered them — on paper — before he could open his mouth.
When Cassian stopped by on the second day to "check in," she didn't open the door. She didn't want to see pity in his eyes — or worse, suspicion.
After two days of research and perfecting each clause, she was done with the new proposal. But she still needed to clear her name and find the culprit.
...
The office is dim and quiet, the kind of quiet that buzzes in Erin's ears. It's late—far too late for anyone to still be here. But Erin can't sleep. Not while her career, her life, might be hanging in the balance.
She walks briskly toward Cassian's office. Her footsteps echo on the marble floor, sharp and precise, like her thoughts. She's clutching a USB drive in her palm—a backup of her improved project proposal. It's her lifeline now.
She pushes the door open without knocking. The lights are off, but the moonlight spilling through the tall windows casts long shadows over the walls and the table strewn with folders.
Erin crosses the room and opens the file cabinet Cassian had used earlier. She sifts through documents methodically, pulling out the ones that contain data from the original project—the one that was stolen. Her fingers tremble. She doesn't know what she's looking for exactly, only that she needs to prove she didn't leak it. The real traitor is out there. And she has to find them.
She pulls out a file and begins scanning its contents, but something catches her attention. There's a trail. A mistake.
Receipts.
Cassian had a habit—he always jotted down internal approvals and document requests on sticky notes before updating them in the system. One of the notes has an unfamiliar signature. It authorizes the project's temporary transfer to a locked server for "high-security audit"—but Cassian had been out of town that day.
Her brows furrow.
She recognizes the authorization signature. She's seen it before. Not in official paperwork—but in one of the proposals of the Thornwell family , signed by Lillianne. Her signature is distinct, dramatic, and sharp.
Her blood runs cold.
Erin rushes to the security room. She knows she shouldn't have access, but desperation is louder than rules.
In the footage, her suspicion was proven true.
Lillianne. Dressed in all black. Entering the building after hours with someone—another employee Erin vaguely recognizes as the janitor. Someone with mid-level clearance. Someone who wouldn't raise alarms if caught in Cassian's office.
The employee breaks in. Lillianne waits by the door.
Erin zooms in.
It's not just a file transfer—they're using a device. Lillianne hands the employee a black flash drive, small, sleek, and clearly preloaded.
A data heist.
Erin records the entire segment and transfers it to her own device.
That's it. That's the proof.
Her chest tightens, not with relief, but something colder.
Lillianne wasn't just trying to get her fired. She was willing to risk the entire firm's credibility. For what? To humiliate her?
No. This runs deeper.
Erin shuts the system down. She checks the hallway—empty—and slips back into the shadows. Her fingers clutch her evidence, her weapon.
Tomorrow, everything changes.
She's going to war.