“They don’t care,” I said. “They just want the city to see a failed plan.”

Through the crack in the door, I saw Adrian standing over a laptop on a glass desk.

Sterling stood beside him, a glass of scotch in his hand.

Adrian’s face was pale, sweat glistening on his forehead.

He looked older, his shoulders hunched as he stared at the screen.

“Almost done,” Adrian said.

“The file metadata will still show your firm’s license,” Sterling noted.

“No,” Adrian said, shaking his head. “I’m routing the save command through a generic contractor portal.”

“It will look like an oversight by Claire’s engineering team.”

I felt a surge of anger, but I forced myself to remain still.

I tapped the screen of my phone, initiating a silent screen-recording of the server log.

Every change he made was being logged in real-time on my backup cloud.

The red recording dot blinked on my screen.

“The file is saving,” Adrian said inside the room.

“Upload it back to the city’s plan-submission queue,” Sterling said.

“Done,” Adrian said, exhaling a long breath.

He closed the laptop with a soft click.