I stood at the head of the table, my tablet connected to the room’s projection screen.

“Thank you for seeing us on such short notice,” I said, keeping my voice calm and professional.

I did not want to sound like an angry ex-wife.

I wanted to sound like the structural engineer who had designed their city’s future.

“This is not a personal dispute,” I began, projecting the code logs onto the screen. “This is a deliberate attack on the integrity of our public infrastructure.”

I pointed to the IP address listed in the security log.

“This access key belongs to Bennett Urban Systems, registered to their corporate headquarters in Boston,” I said.

One of the board members, an older woman named Eleanor Vance, leaned forward.

“Is it possible this was a clerical error, Mrs. Bennett?” she asked. “A simple file sync mistake?”

“No,” I said, bringing up the secondary verification screen. “The user bypassed three separate security warnings.”

I clicked on the user profile metadata.

“They used an administrative bypass code that was only issued to the primary bidder’s executive office,” I said.