Chapter 447

Chapter 447:

“You still don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t want your money. And I certainly don’t want your protection.”

“You have nothing left!” Grayson snapped, losing his composure. “She took your brain trust!”

“She took my hands,” Isolde corrected. “She didn’t take the brain.”

She stepped closer, invading his personal space.

“I hope Belle is good at cryptography, Grayson,” she whispered. “Because those engineers? They don’t have the keys.”

Grayson frowned. “What keys?”

“Goodbye, Grayson,” Isolde said.

She signaled to Arland. They climbed into the silver BMW X7 and pulled away.

Grayson stood on the sidewalk, watching the taillights fade into the distance, a strange, unnameable unease coiling in his gut.

Belle’s car pulled up beside him. “Gray, get in! We’re celebrating at the Champagne Bar!”

𝗝oin 𝘁𝗁o𝘂𝘴а𝗇dѕ 𝗼𝖿 𝖿𝗮ns 𝗈𝗻 𝘨𝘢𝘭𝗇о𝘷𝘦𝗅𝘴.𝘤о𝗆

Grayson tossed his cigarette and crushed it under his shoe. “I’m not going. Enjoy the party yourself.”

Belle froze. “Why?”

“I’m tired,” Grayson said flatly. He got into his own car, leaving Belle standing there in disbelief.

Inside the BMW, the atmosphere was electric.

“Was that a bluff?” Arland asked from the passenger seat.

Isolde pulled a tablet from her bag and opened a secure app.

“The code they worked on is the intellectual property of Carson Dynamics,” Isolde said. “Tom and the others had Level 3 clearance — access to the interface code, the UI, the basic telemetry.” She tapped a red button on the screen: REVOKE ALL CERTIFICATES. “But the core physics engine? The proprietary flight control algorithms? That’s my personal IP, licensed to my own company. It lives on a separate server, encrypted with a key that changes every hour. And only I have the generator.”

“So what did they actually take?” Harper asked from the back seat.

“They took the dashboard,” Isolde said. “They have a pretty car with no engine.”

“And when they try to access the core to migrate it to InnoTech’s systems?” Arland asked, grinning.

Isolde tapped another button: INITIATE LOCKDOWN.

“They’re going to trigger a logic bomb,” she said. “It won’t corrupt the files on my server — it will simply brick their access permanently and wipe any local copies they downloaded. They’ll be left with terabytes of digital garbage.”

Arland threw his head back and laughed. “Belle just spent two million dollars on signing bonuses for engineers who now have access to absolutely nothing of value.”

“Drive,” Isolde said, looking out at the city lights. “We have a competition to win.”

Morning sunlight filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the R&D lab, casting a pale gold sheen over the metallic workbenches. The air hummed with the faint scent of lab equipment and the rich, bitter aroma of black coffee.

Belle strode into the core R&D zone, a steaming coffee cup in each hand, her stiletto heels clicking sharply against the floor. She was oozing confidence, fully expecting to walk in on a bustling scene of data import and technological takeover.

The sight before her snuffed out her smile instantly.

.

.

.