Chapter 1 - THE PHONE
Claire Morgan grabbed Ethan’s laptop and slammed it onto the desk.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
The screen cracked.
Keys jumped loose.
Ethan ran into the home office.
“STOP!”
Claire threw the computer onto the floor.
Ethan dropped beside it.
“TWO THOUSAND HOURS!”
Claire pointed at him.
“GOOD!”
He lifted the broken laptop.
“WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!”
She slapped it from his hands.
“YOU LOVED THAT PROJECT MORE THAN ME!”
The machine hit the floor again.
Ethan stepped toward her.
“That project pays for EVERYTHING!”
Claire laughed bitterly.
“Not anymore.”
Then Ethan saw her phone.
His face changed.
He took it from her hand.
“What did you send?”
Claire went quiet.
“CLAIRE. WHAT DID YOU DO?”
She met his eyes.
“I sent the project to your competitor.”
Ethan stopped breathing.
The recipient was:
Vertex Lending Technologies.
Morgan Systems’ largest competitor.
The attachment was:
ATLAS_FINAL_PACKAGE.zip
Ethan stared at the timestamp.
Thirty-one minutes earlier.
He looked at Claire.
“Did you open the zip?”
“No.”
“What did you send?”
“The project.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She crossed her arms.
“You said it was everything.”
Ethan’s anger vanished.
Now he looked afraid.
Claire saw it.
“What?”
He unlocked her phone again.
Scrolled.
Then whispered:
“Oh, no.”
Claire’s face hardened.
“What?”
Ethan looked at her.
“There’s client data in that package.”
She laughed once.
“You said the project was anonymized.”
“It was supposed to be.”
“Supposed to?”
Ethan stared at the shattered laptop.
May you like
For the first time, Claire realized she had not only attacked her husband.
She might have exposed people she had never met.
