(Top Floor Conference Room, Davies Global)
"Ms. Reed, are you suggesting we abandon the Poseidon Project?"
At the far end of the long table, Silas Davies turned his signet ring slowly. The shadow cast by his hooked nose swallowed half his face.
Aria activated the holographic projection. A 3D model of the Baltic Sea gas field hovered midair as a ripple of gasps circled the room.
"In three hours," she said, "an environmental group will release footage showing our drilling platform destroying a beluga whale habitat. Stock value will plummet by 19%."
She tapped her tablet. A mock-up headline overlaid the model:
"Davies Murders the Ocean!"
"Where did you get this intel?" Davies' knuckles whitened on the tabletop.
"I have my own hummingbirds," she replied with a smile.
The truth? She had personally hacked into the environmental group's server the night before—and planted the entire evidence trail herself.
Only when Davies was drowning in scandal would the Sterling family's buried network begin to stir.