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Chapter 4 - Chapter 5

They called it a dispatch party, but it felt more like a trap.

The office had been scoured to sterile flawlessness. Champagne bottles lined the long marble bar. Staff recorded into the relax in sharp suits and architect grins, the campaign's opening visuals blazing over the divider screens in consistent loops.

Noah stood close to the back with a glass of shimmering cider, feeling as if the floor might drop out at any minute.

"Still breathing?" Max asked, shoulder brushing his.

"Barely."

Max passed him a second glass—this one alcoholic. "Then you're doing better than most."

Noah took it without a word. He hadn't seen Julian all day. The last text from him had been short, clipped.

Keep a low profile tonight. Eyes everywhere.

Noah didn't need the reminder. Half the staff still looked at him like he carried a time bomb in his coat pocket.

Across the room, Lena paced in precise half-circles behind the AV crew, eyeing every flicker of the campaign slides. She looked like a woman bracing for war.

Julian hadn't appeared yet.

When he did, the air shifted.

Noah turned as the crowd subtly parted, and there he was—Julian Cross, in tailored charcoal, jaw tight, tie loosened just enough to seem disarming.

But his eyes were all steel.

And they landed on Noah for half a breath too long before sliding away.

He approached the mic, raising his glass to silence the room.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "thank you for joining us for the official launch of the Royal Archer rebrand—"

The screen behind him glitched.

Once. Twice.

Then it changed.

Noah didn't hear the rest of the sentence. Nobody did.

Because the visual on the screen wasn't the campaign anymore.

It was a grainy photo: Julian and Noah under a streetlight, heads close, a hand brushing an arm. Intimate. Incriminating.

Then came the title card:

JULIAN CROSS: CEO OR CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

Followed by bullet points. A forged invoice. Allegations. Timelines.

The room froze.

No one moved.

Not even Julian.

Then the screen went black again, a flicker of static across it before the campaign slides resumed like nothing had happened.

A few cameras clicked.

A glass shattered somewhere.

And Noah felt the second fire ignite.

Julian ended the speech seconds later, voice calm, face unreadable.

He walked offstage to a sea of frozen stares.

Lena was already on her earpiece. Staff were herded away. The drinks stopped pouring. The slideshow stopped playing. And the room broke into a dozen frantic fragments of conversation.

Max leaned into Noah's ear.

"Stay where people can see you. But don't speak to anyone."

"What just happened?"

Max didn't answer. He was already gone.

Noah's hands shook around the stem of his glass.

Because this wasn't just sabotage.

It was a war.

Thirty minutes later, Noah found himself alone in Julian's office.

He hadn't been called up—he fairly climbed the stairs, overlooked the bolted lift, and strolled in.

Julian stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, observing the city as if it might provide him with answers.

"I thought you said we were ready," Noah said.

Julian didn't turn. "We were ready for the leak. The photo. The rumour mill. We weren't ready for this."

"You think someone inside triggered it?"

"I know someone did. No one could've hacked our system that fast unless they had internal access."

Noah crossed his arms. "So which one of them is the traitor?"

His face was blank, but his voice wasn't.

"That is what I want to learn."

Elsewhere – Monarch Studio

Reed Klein held a crystal glass of whiskey and smirked as the clip of the slideshow interruption played on loop across his laptop.

"Timing was clean," he told the woman across the desk. "Sharp enough to look like scandal, sloppy enough to raise doubts. Public embarrassment, internal paranoia. And now? Cross will do the damage for us."

The woman nodded. "And the asset?"

"Still in place. Still invisible."

He raised the glass in a mock toast.

"To implosions."

Back at Cross & Cove, Lena was deep in damage control mode. Her voice carried down the hallway as she barked into her phone.

"No, the invoice was forged. Yes, we'll issue a statement. No comment until legal has reviewed it—"

She broke off as Julian passed her.

"Board wants a call in forty-five," she said without looking at him.

Julian gave a sharp nod. "Tell them I'll be ready."

She didn't ask if he would be.

Noah stayed in Julian's office even after he left.

He didn't know why. Perhaps because he was afraid of the looks on the main floor. He sat on the desk's edge and looked at the black screen. To come here, he had put everything on the line.

To believe in this place. In Julian. In the future they almost had.

And now?

He didn't know what to accept anymore.

He nearly didn't listen to the delicate beep of a mail caution.

It came from a separate laptop—a slim black one near the corner of the desk. Not Julian's usual terminal.

It was open but locked.

The screen flashed briefly: 1 New Message Received – "RE: Invoice Routing Confirmation"

And underneath, partially visible:

Sender: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Invoice routing - final stage

Noah stared.

Max.

He froze.

Noah knew Max's inbox format. He'd seen it a hundred times in shared meetings.

But Max's name is linked to the invoice?

No. It had to be a mistake. A coincidence. Someone is using Max's access. Maybe even a setup.

Still…

He didn't touch the laptop.

But he didn't forget the name.

Julian returned fifteen minutes later. His shirt sleeves were rolled up now. His tie was discarded.

He looked like a man unravelling in slow motion.

"You need to go home," he said.

Noah stood. "You think I can sleep after that?"

"I don't want you involved in the fallout."

"It's a little late for that."

Julian didn't answer.

"I saw the message," Noah said softly. "On the other laptop. From Max."

Julian stiffened.

"I didn't open it," Noah added. "But the subject line said something about the invoice."

Julian crossed the room and sat at the desk.

He opened the laptop.

Typed in a password.

Opened the email.

And stared.

TO: Julian Cross

FROM: Max Jacobs

RE: Invoice routing - final stage

BODY: "Klein confirmed the shell firm is registered. Just needs one push from legal to look clean. You sure you want me to leak it from your office? Bit too obvious, yeah? But hey—it's your call."

Attached: a .zip folder labelled "Failsafe - Invoice Trail.jpg"

Julian sat back slowly.

Noah waited.

"Well?" he asked.

Julian closed the screen.

"It's not real," he said.

Noah blinked. "Excuse me?"

"It's not real. Max wouldn't send that. And even if he did, he wouldn't send it to me."

"Then why's it here?"

Julian stood. "Because someone wants us to think it's him. They want me paranoid. They want you to doubt the people around you. That's what sabotage looks like when it's personal."

"So it's a frame job."

"It's a psychological war."

Julian looked him dead in the eyes.

"And we're not going to lose it."

The emergency board call was worse than expected.

Not because of the threats—they were predictable.

But because of the silence.

One by one, board members asked carefully neutral questions, none of them outright accusing Julian but none defending him either.

Only one—Marcelle Deyn, the oldest on the board—voiced dissent.

"I've worked with Julian Cross for nine years," she said flatly. "And I know a fake invoice when I see one."

But her voice was one against many.

The board agreed to an internal audit.

Julian agreed to a temporary handover of campaign authority—"for transparency."

Lena threw a folder against a wall after the call ended.

Noah eventually left the office around 1:15 a.m.

He didn't go home.

He took the subway three stops downtown and found himself outside a bar that played jazz through old speakers and served whiskey without ice.

He didn't drink it.

He just sat there, staring at the inside of his mind.

Then someone slid into the seat across from him.

Max.

Noah's spine straightened.

"I figured I'd find you here," Max said. "You always go underground when you're s

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