I stared at him in disbelief.

“He is hurting the company just to stop me,” I said.

“If the vendor lines are frozen, our manufacturing plant in Elgin will shut down by morning.”

“He doesn’t care,” Julian said.

“He would rather burn the company to the ground than let you take control of it.”

“He is trying to starve us out before the board can vote tomorrow.”

My chest tightened as I realized the implications.

Without operational funds, Caldwell Innovations would look like a sinking ship to the board.

The shares would plummet, and the directors might panic and back Ethan just to stabilize the stock.

Julian’s phone buzzed again.

This time, it was an encrypted email notification from an external server.

“Who is that?” I asked.

Julian opened the message and squinted at the screen.

“It’s an anonymous forward from the executive suite’s internal server,” he said.

“Someone just copied a massive batch of personal audio files from Ethan’s private drive.”

“The sender used an untraceable relay.”

“But the digital signature matches a terminal in the assistant’s office.”

“Sabrina,” I whispered.