Chapter 457

Chapter 457:

“Ma’am,” came a voice from across the control room. “We’re getting reports of power fluctuations in all three expansion cities. Grid coordination is failing without our central systems.”

Camille’s hand shook as she answered the phone. “This is Camille Pierce. Yes, we’re aware of the situation. No, I can’t give you a timeline for restoration yet.” The calls kept coming. Angry municipal officials. Worried investors. News reporters who had somehow already learned about the outage. Each conversation was a nail in Kane Industries’ coffin, each question a reminder of how much was at stake.

Victoria Kane arrived forty-five minutes after the crisis began, her silver hair perfectly styled despite the early hour. She moved through the control room like a general surveying a battlefield, her pale eyes taking in every detail.

“Status report,” she commanded.

“Complete system failure starting at 6:47 AM,” Hannah replied. “No obvious cause. No malware detected. The servers just… died.”

“All of them? Simultaneously?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s unprecedented.”

Victoria’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “And the backup systems?”

“Failed at exactly the same time. Someone would need incredibly sophisticated knowledge of our infrastructure to coordinate this kind of attack.”

“How long until full restoration?”

Hannah hesitated. “At least twelve hours. Maybe eighteen. We’re essentially rebuilding everything from scratch.”

Victoria nodded once, absorbing the information with the calm of someone who had weathered countless storms. But Camille saw the tension in her shoulders, the slight tremor in her hands that betrayed inner turmoil.

“I want a complete investigation,” Victoria announced. “Every access log. Every employee with sufficient clearance. Every contractor who’s worked on these systems.”

She turned to Camille. “Call an emergency board meeting for this afternoon. And prepare a press statement. We need to control the narrative before it controls us.”

𝓵𝖆𝖙𝖾𝓈𝖙 сɧ𝖺ρ𝗍𝖊𝗋𝓈 𝔾α𝗅𝗇𝗈ν𝖊𝗅𝗌﹒ⅽ𝗈𝗺

As Victoria moved toward the door, she paused. “And find out what today’s date signifies. Someone chose September 15th for a reason.”

In her private office, Victoria sat alone with her laptop, diving deep into Kane Industries’ corporate history. September 15th. The date nagged at her, familiar but not immediately identifiable.

She pulled up archived files from the company’s earlier years, scanning through acquisition records, press releases, financial reports. There, a folder marked “Meridian Technologies Final Closure — September 15th.”

Victoria’s blood ran cold as the implications hit her. Today was the fifteenth anniversary of Meridian’s collapse. The exact date when Richard Pierce’s suicide had closed the final chapter on one of her most ruthless business campaigns.

Someone knew. Someone remembered. Someone was sending her a very specific message.

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