Melanie landed in New York and walked directly into the Kallen Capital war room, the high-tech command center now a fortress harboring a silent enemy. Adrian Cole, the Global CTO and Rhys's long-time friend, stood at the planning table, looking every bit the indispensable ally, detailing the technical defense against The Sentinel. Melanie felt a cold nausea as she was forced to collaborate with the very mole she had uncovered.
"Excellent work, Adrian," she said, her voice steady, accepting the staged security logs he was handing her. The lie was instant and excruciating: she had to work side-by-side with the traitor to defend the company the traitor was actively trying to ruin.
Hours later, as the core team departed, Rhys poured them both a scotch, the gesture reserved for shared pressure and fragile trust.
"I need to know, Melanie," he said quietly, his eyes searching hers.
"Looking at the full picture, at every vulnerability exposed by this mess… Is there anything else internally we need to address right now? I need absolute truth, now." The question was a direct demand for the secret in her secure drive. She chose the company's survival.
"We've tightened security across the board, Rhys," she replied, maintaining perfect, unwavering eye contact. "The immediate threat has been contained, and the priority remains the Sentinel."
She had passed his loyalty test, yet in doing so, she had cemented a new, silent fracture in their bond—a profound lie by omission.
Melanie moved immediately, establishing a private, encrypted terminal, completely off the Kallen network ledger. Under the guise of a "post-leak security audit," she gained access to the logs for the highly restricted Administrative Backdoor Account and rerouted all activity alerts to her private terminal.
Next, she deployed the bait: she drafted a fictional internal memo labeled "PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL – SETTLEMENT STRATEGY." The document outlined a completely fabricated, company-destroying plan to offer a massive, confidential settlement to The Sentinel in exchange for revealing their source. She saved the document to a server Adrian frequently checked but was above his necessary clearance. The trap was set: Adrian would read the document, panic at the thought of a settlement exposing him, and immediately feed the fabricated lie to Chloe.
Melanie spent the next five hours staring at the file log in the deserted war room. The silence was unnerving; the intensity was physically draining. The clock read 3:17 AM when the log finally glowed: Access Granted by Adrian Cole. The trap had sprung, yielding the necessary, fresh evidence of treason.
At 7:00 AM, the corporate building was rocked. A breaking alert flashed across every terminal: KALLEN CAPITAL CRUMBLES: Sources Indicate Massive Confidential Settlement Pending. The Sentinel article was devastatingly precise, citing the exact fabricated details of the "nine-figure payout" from Melanie's memo. The validation was absolute: Adrian Cole was the active mole.
Rhys stormed in, pale with shock and fury. Adrian Cole stood beside him, managing a weak, bewildered denial about an "outside hack." Melanie stepped forward, cutting Adrian off with cold certainty. "It wasn't an outside hack, Rhys. It was an internal extraction." She placed her tablet on the table, displaying the Sentinel article, the fabricated memo, and finally, the irrefutable, time-stamped log: "At 2:47 AM, the file was accessed by a terminal logged in under Adrian Cole's credentials."
The silence was absolute. Rhys didn't look at Melanie; he stared at the log betraying his lifelong friend. The blow was systemic. "Security," he commanded, his voice tight with shock, "Escort Adrian Cole out of the building."
After the traitor was gone, Rhys finally turned to Melanie, the weariness on his face deeper than any stress she had ever seen. He didn't yell; he simply asked the inevitable question.
"You saw the IP link to the Kratos filing, Melanie. You knew before you went to Brussels that Adrian was the likely mole, didn't you? You lied by omission."
Melanie met his gaze, giving him the cold,
professional logic that was the only language he could process right now. "If I had told you that night, you would have prioritized vengeance and a full internal investigation. You would have risked the company to settle a personal score. I needed you focused and professional to survive the attack, which is why I created the trap and secured the proof myself."
He accepted the brutal truth of her strategy, but the personal toll was immense.
"The trust we were rebuilding… it had a prerequisite, didn't it?" Rhys said, his voice quiet, the loss profound. "My stability before your honesty." He recognized that Melanie was prepared to act entirely unilaterally, against him, to protect the company.
"Adrian was just a tool. She used the Swap Ratio to break our trust, and she used Adrian to cripple our defense."
Rhys looked at Melanie, a hard determination replacing the shock.
"Then we stop fighting the ghost and we fight the witch. Chloe Vance. Find out where she is, who she's working for, and how she managed to break my inner circle. We go on the offensive."
The internal war was over, sealed by a shared, necessary deception, and the external war had just escalated to its final, focused target.