Aruna had always believed in the power of trust.
Veloria was built on it the invisible thread that bound her, Reza, Naya, and Vincent during their earliest, hungriest days. But now, that thread had frayed beyond recognition.
She no longer trusted her own walls.
The whisper campaign, the phantom system errors, the widening cracks in once-flawless operations they weren't just signs of external pressure. They were symptoms of betrayal. Calculated, surgical betrayal.
It was time to stop hoping.
It was time to act.
On Monday morning, Aruna called a closed-door meeting with Reza and Naya.
Just the three of them.
No agenda sent in advance, no usual updates, no "team alignment."
They met in Veloria's offsite co-working bunker a secondary location rarely used except during high-stakes strategy sessions. A space designed for clarity, for contingency. For survival.
"We have a traitor," Aruna said, bluntly.
Reza sat upright. Naya blinked, stunned.
"I've suspected for weeks," Aruna continued. "And now I know. Someone inside has been feeding intel. Sabotaging from within."
She pulled out a file a thick stack of cross-referenced logs, disguised operation briefs, and timestamps.
Vincent's name wasn't mentioned, but the implication was clear.
"I'm not here to point fingers," she said. "Not yet. But I need both of you to work outside our regular systems. Nothing goes through Veloria's internal platforms anymore. Not until we're sure."
Reza exhaled, then nodded slowly. "What do you need?"
"I need a wall," Aruna said. "We're isolating core operations, starting today. I want an independent backup of every critical system codebase, finance, legal. And I want surveillance on all access logs. Quietly."
Naya, still stunned, finally found her voice. "What if they notice we're watching?"
Aruna's eyes sharpened. "Let them. The real trap isn't catching them red-handed. It's making them panic."
Back at headquarters, Vincent noticed the shift almost immediately.
His admin access, once unrestricted, began throwing occasional permission errors.
Some internal APIs were suddenly moved or restricted subtle enough to pass as system maintenance, but telling enough to someone watching closely.
He knew what this meant.
Aruna had narrowed the field.
She didn't know everything not yet. But she was circling.
That made her dangerous.
And it meant his window was closing.
That same afternoon, chaos bloomed quietly on Veloria's internal Slack.
Multiple teams reported duplication errors in product data.
Customer support received a wave of confused inquiries about account mismatches.
Sales pipelines showed leads disappearing overnight not marked as "lost," simply... erased.
Nadia, the recent hire who had been handling some of the data syncs, was summoned to respond.
"I haven't touched those segments in two days," she explained nervously, eyes wide as she reviewed the corrupted logs. "I don't understand how this even "
"Check your access history," one of the tech leads cut in. "Someone used your credentials last night."
Nadia's face went pale. "I I wasn't even online."
A murmur spread through the war room.
Aruna watched, silent.
This wasn't just sabotage anymore. It was weaponized paranoia.
Exactly what Vincent wanted.
In the shadows of the third floor, Vincent watched the unfolding drama with surgical detachment.
He didn't plant evidence directly that would be reckless.
He merely nudged the system, left breadcrumbs that suggested Nadia was the weak link.
It was enough.
With suspicion pointed in her direction, the real work could proceed undisturbed.
He had already begun transferring sensitive modules to offshore mirrors, wrapped in proxies.
Veloria's edge their proprietary edu-tech algorithms would soon exist outside Aruna's control.
When the final strike came, she would be left with only ashes.
But Aruna wasn't as blind as she appeared.
Later that night, she met with Reza in a parking lot rooftop, shielded from cameras and microphones.
"I want you to follow Nadia," she said, her voice low. "But not because I think she's the traitor."
Reza furrowed his brow. "You think someone's setting her up?"
"I know they are," Aruna replied. "But if we follow the trap, we follow the traitor."
She handed him a burner phone. "No tracking, no digital trail. Just eyes and ears."
Reza took it without hesitation.
By the end of the week, Veloria felt like a war zone behind a polished glass facade.
Meetings were held with forced optimism.
Progress updates were riddled with inconsistencies.
The leadership team avoided eye contact more than they shared it.
Vincent played his part perfectly.
He was the concerned lieutenant, always helpful, always composed the glue holding the chaos together.
But inside, he was already saying goodbye.
Giselle had promised him something better.
Not just equity in her new venture, but revenge sweet, elegant revenge.
He would watch Veloria collapse from within and emerge reborn in a project that truly valued his brilliance.
Or so he thought.
What he didn't know was that Giselle, too, had her own plans.
Her silence wasn't submission it was strategy.
She needed Vincent only for access, for disruption.
Once his usefulness ended, she wouldn't need to lift a finger.
He would implode on his own burned by the very fire he helped ignite.
That Sunday, as rain whispered against the Veloria office windows, Aruna stood in the center of the conference room alone.
She looked at the blackened monitor, the muted skyline beyond.
Veloria had been her dream.
But dreams, she was learning, came with blood prices.
And soon, someone would pay.