Chapter 432

After the call ended, Finn left his room.

Walking along the second-floor hallway, he saw Evangeline sitting on the sofa. Sheriff was curled up on her lap, sleeping with his eyes narrowed to slits. Evangeline was gently stroking the cat's fur, lost in thought.

“You'll get wrinkles if you keep frowning like that,” Finn said with a smile as he walked down the stairs.

Hearing his voice, Evangeline snapped out of it, immediately smoothing her brow and rubbing her forehead vigorously.

"What's wrong?" Finn asked, smiling at her.

Evangeline thought for a moment before deciding to tell him.

The smart robot they had originally designed was leaked by someone, allowing Fawkes Enterprises to use their algorithms and hold a press conference first. So, she had to update the algorithms and functionalities to create a different model.

But even though it was different from the Fawkes Enterprises robot, the underlying architecture was still similar.

Over the past two days, she had preemptively patched the internal system to address potential vulnerabilities. But at almost the same time-no, even earlier than her-Fawkes Enterprises had also patched their system, and their version was remarkably similar to the one she had just submitted.

Now, with Fawkes Enterprises having released their update first, rumors were already circulating online that UME was plagiarizing them. That was the polite version; there were uglier accusations, mostly directed at her personally.

Although Glenn had quickly suppressed the worst of the public outcry, many in Serenity City were aware of the conflict between her and Poppy. Poppy's die-hard fans seized the opportunity, flooding her social media pages with thousands of hateful comments. Every one of her posts was buried in vitriol.

But Evangeline had grown used to it and was long immune to the hate. She recounted the situation to Finn in just a few brief sentences.

Finn could guess it was far more serious than she let on, but seeing that she didn't want to elaborate, he didn't press her for details.

"Soren probably doesn't know about this," he said after a moment of thought. "He's too arrogant and

proud. If he really wanted UME's net

technology, he'd most likely try to acquire the company or poach its key people. He wouldn't stoop to such petty tricks."

Evangeline's thoughts aligned with his.

As she considered this, she recalled Poppy smugly telling her two months ago that Soren had offered her an annual salary of six hundred thousand dollars. At the time, she had dismissed it as Soren showing favoritism. But thinking about it now, Soren didn't need a reason to give Poppy money. If he wanted to

could have just transferred it

directly, without using a salary as a pretext.

The fact that he mentioned salary and shares, and that Poppy held a position within Fawkes Enterprises likely meant that Poppy had

promised him she could lead this Poppy would do

business division

anything to win Soren's approval.

"So there's a mole inside UME colluding with Poppy," Evangeline concluded.

Finn shook his head. "She's too cautious to do something like this directly. There's probably someone else who will take the fall for her."

"I'm more inclined to think she instigated one of her subordinates to do it."

That way, if the plot was discovered, Poppy could easily distance herself and avoid getting dragged into the mess.

Evangeline nodded in agreement. “Regardless of Poppy's methods, it's a sure thing that UME has a mole."

She fell silent for a moment, contemplating her next move. UME was in a critical expansion phase. If this wasn't handled properly, or if an innocent person was wrongly accused, it could demoralize the team and cause internal chaos.

Without realizing it, her brow furrowed once more.