Chapter 2 - The Setup
The rain began to fall just as Claire’s town car pulled up to her sleek, modern brownstone in the West Village. The sleek black vehicle hummed to a halt, and the driver hopped out to hold the umbrella, but Claire waved him off.
"It's fine, Thomas. Go home to your family," she said, stepping out into the damp, neon-lit autumn air.
As the car vanished down the rain-slicked street, Claire unlocked her oak front door and stepped inside. The quiet of her home usually brought her peace, but tonight, the silence felt heavy, suffocating. She kicked off her heels—checking the mended seam of her dress with a grimace—and tossed her clutch onto the marble entryway table.
Her phone buzzed violently on the glass surface.
She picked it up. An unknown number.
*“You think Vale can protect you forever, little girl? Check your company server.”*
The text message chilled her blood. Claire’s heart hammered against her ribs. She sprinted down the hallway to her private home office, flung open her MacBook, and slammed her fingers onto the keyboard.
The screen flickered. A terrifying red banner flashed across her monitor: **BREACH DETECTED. ENCRYPTION KEYS COMPROMISED.**
"No, no, no," Claire whispered, typing her master override code with frantic speed.
Lines of code scrolled past like falling rain. Someone had cracked her firm’s proprietary database—the confidential feasibility studies for the Hudson Yards project, the zoning analyses, the private client lists. If this data leaked, or worse, if it was altered to show falsified approvals for Grant Mercer’s illegal dumping sites, Bennett Strategic would face federal fraud charges and immediate liquidation.
Her phone rang. It was her lead partner, Marcus, shouting over the line.
"Claire! We’ve been hit! Someone uploaded a corrupted environmental report to the municipal board using our master signature! The SEC is freezing our accounts!"
"Call the cybersecurity firm! Get our offline backups spinning up now!" Claire barked, panic threatening to override her logic. "I'm coming in!"
She threw her coat back on, not even bothering to change out of her dress. She raced out the front door, hail-like raindrops stinging her face. She pulled her phone out to dial Adrian’s number—she hated herself for it, but he was the only person in New York powerful enough to trace a high-level digital sabotage of this magnitude.
Before her thumb hit the call button, a pair of heavy, rough hands grabbed her from behind.
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A heavy burlap sack was slammed over her head before she could scream. The scent of cheap gasoline and wet asphalt filled her nostrils. She kicked, flailed, and clawed at the air, but strong arms hoisted her off her feet, throwing her into the back of a waiting van that sped off into the rainy Manhattan night.
***
