Chapter 27 - The Vance Retaliation
Back in his glass-walled penthouse overlooking Central Park, Julian Vance smashed his crystal tumbler against the brick fireplace, sending shards of amber glass and ice scattering across the hardwood floor.
"Incompetent fools!" Vance roared, his face flushed with uncontainable rage as Marcus Thorne stood quietly by the doorway. "She humiliated us in front of the entire board! My investors are pulling out, and the SEC is breathing down our necks!"
Marcus adjusted his cuffs, his voice cold and calculated to mask his own underlying panic. "Julian, losing the board battle means we can't take over the company from the inside. But that doesn't mean we can't destroy its market valuation from the outside."
Vance turned slowly, his eyes narrowing. "What do you mean?"
"The core software architecture—Hartwell Prime—is preparing for its global public infrastructure rollout next month," Marcus said, stepping forward. "If we can plant a sophisticated, untraceable zero-day exploit in their preliminary staging servers, we can cause a catastrophic system failure during the live international demonstration."
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Vance stared at him, a dark, dangerous silence settling over the room. "A cyber attack of that magnitude is a federal penitentiary offense, Marcus."
"It's only a crime if you get caught," Marcus smiled coldly. "And we won't leave a single digital fingerprint pointing back to Vance & Sterling."
