The digits on his phone blinked like a heartbeat, 01:42, 01:41, and the room felt smaller, like a jar someone had tightened the lid on. Ivy's fingers flew over the keyboard, Damian moved through security prompts like someone walking a minefield, and Ezean barked orders into the phone, and every sentence he said was a rope pulling them toward a cliff they could not see.
"Phase Two is live," Ivy said without looking up, voice flat. "They've started mirroring the stream to several encrypted channels. One of them is selling access. The clip has been clipped into short loops, being seeded on fringe forums."
Alondra's hands were icy on her knees. The world that had been normal twenty-four hours ago
— the cafe, the grocery aisle, Zara's laugh — felt like someone else's memory. She could see Marisol's face as it would be on the phone now, the way her mother would squeeze the receiver and talk to anyone who would listen, loud and fierce and terrified.
"Can you take it down," she asked, her voice small, "all of it, please? Take it down before anyone sees more."
Ivy's jaw tightened. "We can request takedowns. We can file DMCA, and we can push legal notices. But once something is on a mirror network, it multiplies faster than we can delete. We need the source."
Damian slid a tablet across the table. A map of dots, timestamps like pinpricks. "Here," he said, "the stream is hopping servers in a pattern that looks like someone set up proxies to bounce the feed. It originates from an IP cluster that matches maintenance contractors used by the building. It's domestic, not overseas."
Ezean's face was a blade. "Find the contractor. Now."
Damian tapped, his fingers steady. "I pulled the list. There's a temp who logged access to the service corridor last week. The badge shows activity at 02:13, right before the first clip was posted."
"Run the footage," Ivy ordered. Damian did. The monitor stuttered, frames aligning, the corridor cam filling the screen with the same anonymous beige walls Alondra had seen in the suite's corridor. In one frame someone in a maintenance uniform moved past the camera, hood up, face turned away, and then the feed cut.
"Enhance," Ezean said. He always said that when the room needed him to be the man who fixed things by thinking faster. Ivy and Damian ran the sequence through filters, contrast, and the slow digital scrubbing that sometimes made miracles and sometimes made monsters. A shape, not a face, visible for a fraction of a second. A hand that held a phone.
"We'll get prints," Damian said. "If the badge was used, they could have piggybacked an ID. If someone scrubbed the logs, it was professional."
Alondra felt like a spectator at her own funeral. She wanted to be useful, to hand them a fact that would make everything stop. "What about my job?" she asked, because the fear that tightened behind her voice was simple and awful: losing everything for a moment she didn't even remember taking. "If the board pushes, the airline can suspend me. They can make me the story."
Ezean's hand found hers under the table, his fingers warm. "I'll talk to them," he said, but the sound of his voice carried the tiredness of a man who had used money to silence storms and discovered storms don't care. "I can call the chairman before dawn; I can put pressure. I can set the narrative that we were victims of an illegal leak. I can do a lot."
"You can also make it worse," Alondra said, because honesty was a thin hot thing in her mouth. "When you fight dirty, people notice. They remember the wreckage."
He didn't answer for a beat. Then, quietly, "I know."
They worked until morning by rote, like surgeons in a crisis. Calls went out to platform contacts, takedown requests went through encrypted channels, and a lawyer called with instructions and smoke. Ivy coordinated PR and typed a statement that said nothing and everything, a press release that framed the photo as an unlawful invasion of privacy, the language sterile but legal.
Ezean insisted the word "scandal" be avoided and demanded the phrasing "privacy breach."
Outside, the city slid into light, and the rain finally stopped. The room felt like a pressure cooker that had released steam but not danger. Alondra called Zara and left a message she couldn't bring herself to send aloud. She messaged Rafael, who answered with a string of angry emojis and a promise to be ready for her if she wanted to fly back to Madrid. Her mother texted prayers and a promise to come if needed, and Alondra felt both held and suffocated by the warmth of those nets.
At nine forty-five, a new alert blinked. The chairman was demanding to speak in person. He wanted the boardroom, he wanted answers, and he wanted them before the markets opened. Ezean's face grew thin. He stood, paced, then stopped at the window. "They want a scapegoat," he said. "They want a resolution that looks decisive."
"What does that mean for me?" Alondra asked, because every plan felt like a hope that might be co-opted.
He turned, the man whose face could be on the front page if they decided to tear him down. "It means we have to be tight," he said. "It means we have to control what we say and when we say it. It means I will not let you walk into that room alone."
She wanted to protest, wanted to insist she was not property to be defended, but the look in his eyes was fierce and vulnerable at once, and she felt the sudden childish need to lean into that fortress. "Don't make me less than I am," she said, voice shaking.
"I won't," he said, and he didn't sound like a politician. He sounded like a man who had promised once to himself he would not be that person again.
They left for the company compound that looked like any private office building on the outside but smelled like money and decisions inside. Security checks were clinical, the receptionist's smile thin. The boardroom was glass and cold, the morning light slicing through vertical blinds. The chairman sat at the head of the table like a judge, his face unreadable, the board arranged like a jury. Cameras and laptops winked like eyes ready to capture every gesture.
"You have twelve minutes," the chairman said without preamble, "to explain how a private photograph of you and this woman was taken in a secure suite and posted online." The words were direct and small, but they hit like a hammer.
Ezean's reply was measured, each sentence a brick: "There was an illegal breach of privacy. We are pursuing legal action and are conducting an internal investigation. The image was taken in my private suite without consent." He sounded practiced, his voice steady, but Alondra watched the slow furrow between the chairman's brows. The board wanted reassurance, not just words. They wanted him to look above consequences and steer the ship.
"We have investors worried," said a woman with silver hair, voice sharp. "If this goes on too long, it affects stock performance. We need a controllable narrative."
"We're making the narrative," Ezean said, and there was steel. "It is a breach. We will find the source, and we will prosecute."
"But what about her?" the chairman asked, turning to Alondra like a prosecutor might. "What is she to the company? Our guidelines are clear about interactions with staff." The subtext was worse than the question, "Could this expose the company to a PR hit?"
Alondra's stomach dropped. She could feel the table burn through her palms. "I—" She had a thousand replies and none of them useful. "I'm a flight attendant," she managed, voice small. "I was working. I made a mistake by falling asleep. I didn't consent to being photographed. I didn't—" Words tangled. The men and women in suits listened like a jury who wanted a confession.
The chairman's lips pursed. "Protocols exist for a reason," he said dryly. "If crew members are being compromised, we must review practices." He tapped a pen. "Mr. Carter, this reflects on your judgment as much as it does on company operations. The market will demand certainty." Ezean's jaw tightened. He didn't flinch; he'd been shot before and knew how to stand taller. "We will provide that certainty," he said. "But scapegoating a worker who was violated is not an answer." He looked back at Alondra then, and for a fleeting second she saw a soft, protective thing she hadn't expected from a man whose life was moved by acquisition and control.
The board muttered. Some nodded to maintain balance; others waited for his fall. Meetings ended with threats masked as offers. They would investigate, but regrettably, they would have to place an interim hold on any staff implicated until clearance. The phrase landed like a guillotine: interim hold. Suspension. Paperwork. Lawyers. Three words that could ruin a person slower than flame.
Ezean stood afterwards and pulled her into the bustling foyer, people moving like fish around them. "I won't let them fire you," he said fiercely, but his voice carried the same calculation he didn't like: he could fight, he could soothe, he could buy, but he couldn't rewrite the way the world liked to punish women who had been exposed.
"Promise me," she said, small and rough, "promise me you won't let them turn my life into a leak."
He took her hands like he would hold something fragile and said, "I promise."
They left under glare and gossip, cameras outside pretending to be anonymous. The day curled into an afternoon of meetings, lawyers, and calls with PR. Alondra sat in a small room while Ivy and an external counsel rehearsed statements, telling her what to say and what to never say, shaping truth into a statement that would survive headlines.
By evening her phone was a river of notifications. There were cruel messages, supportive notes, strangers judging, and strangers offering help. Zara sent a voice note, pleading and half angry. Rafael texted that he'd come if she wanted to run. Her mother called until she picked up, and Marisol's voice was a steadying, fierce thing.
Around ten the encrypted line beeped. Damian's face went hard. "We traced part of the stream," he said. "It's being uploaded from an IP cluster tied to a storage unit in the industrial quarter, and—" his voice tightened—"the uploader used an account with a name that matches a contractor who used to work for Mr. Carter's firm. Someone with access."
Alondra felt the air pull out of the room. "Someone from his circle?" Her voice was barely a breath.
Ezean's face went blank for a beat, then small, then furious. He didn't speak for a long time. When he finally answered, he was quiet and precise. "Find them," he said. "All channels. Trace, arrest, and expose whoever did this."
Damian nodded. "I'm on it."
Outside, the city lights blinked, indifferent. Inside, they made plans like surgeons, precise and cold. Alondra sat, fingers folded, and let the fear move through her like an animal testing a fence. She had wanted adventure once and had flirted with the idea of a life that was larger than flight schedules. She hadn't meant a life where private moments could be currency for someone else's power.
The phone on Ezean's table blinked again, and this time the message was simple, stark, and personal: WE HAVE YOUR FAMILY'S PHOTOS. PHASE II: EXPOSURE.
Alondra's mouth went dry, a bitter shape in her throat. She looked to him, to the man who had promised to protect her. He read the message, and his body thinned into something taut and ready. "They're playing for more than a boardroom win," he said quietly. "They want to burn everything that matters."
The room turned cold as a shutter falling over a window. The lights seemed to dim. And outside, somewhere in the city, someone pressed play on content that would not be erased by legalese or apologies.