Chapter 140

Chapter 140:

Daron laughed, stepping into her space. “Feisty. I bet you’re wild in bed. That’s why Arland keeps you around, right? It’s not the engineering. It’s the—”

“Daron,” Isolde cut him off, her voice dropping low. “How is Emily?”

Daron blinked. “What?”

“Your wife. Emily. The one whose father owns the firm you work for.” Isolde drew out her phone. “I wonder what she’d think if I sent her the audio of this conversation. Or perhaps the security footage of you grabbing the waitress’s arm ten minutes ago.”

Daron’s face went slack. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me,” Isolde said. “I have nothing to lose. You have a trust fund and a marriage to a woman who already suspects you’re a loser. Do you really want to roll those dice?”

Daron stared at her. The lust drained from his expression and something colder replaced it — fear. He understood, belatedly, that he was no longer dealing with Grayson’s quiet wife. He was dealing with a predator.

“You’re a bitch,” he muttered, stepping back.

S𝗵a𝗿e 𝘺𝗼𝘶r 𝘵h𝘰𝘶𝘨𝗁t𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘨а𝗅ո𝗼𝗏𝘦𝘭𝗌.c𝗼𝗺

“And you’re a parasite,” Isolde replied. “Run along, Daron. The adults are talking.”

He retreated inside.

Arland let out a low whistle. “Did you actually record him?”

“No,” Isolde admitted, slipping her phone back into her clutch. “But men like Daron are always guilty of something. Fear does the rest.”

Inside, the lights dimmed. A spotlight hit the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer boomed. “Please welcome the Chief Strategy Officer of InnoTech, Dr. Belle Escobar!”

Belle walked onto the stage. She had repaired her makeup, though her smile looked brittle. Behind her, a massive screen displayed a complex schematic of a satellite array.

Isolde moved to the glass doors to watch.

“This is the InnoTech StarLink Module,” Belle announced, reading from a teleprompter. “Using our proprietary compression algorithm…”

Isolde squinted at the screen. “Wait.”

“What is it?” Arland asked.

“That schematic,” Isolde whispered. “Look at the power distribution node. They’re using a deprecated version of the KestrelX positioning library.”

She paused, her eyes moving rapidly across the diagram.

“They acquired the company that developed it, but they never did a deep code audit. That library has a known thermal throttling bug in the source code. A bug I wrote a patch for three years ago — a patch they clearly never implemented.”

Isolde began to laugh. It was a dark, incredulous sound.

“They’re pitching a system that will short-circuit the moment it enters an eclipse shadow,” she said. “They literally acquired a bug.”

Across the room, Grayson stood near the stage watching Belle — taking in the confidence, the flash, the polished performance. Then his gaze drifted and found Isolde. She was whispering to Arland, pointing at the screen, slowly shaking her head.

She looked disappointed. Not angry. Simply, professionally disappointed.

A cold knot formed in Grayson’s stomach. He looked back at the screen. It had seemed impressive to him. But Isolde’s expression made him feel as though he were staring at a child’s finger painting.

What does she see that I don’t?

The applause for Belle was polite but thin. The industry experts in the room knew fluff when they heard it.

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