The Calm Before the Avalanche.
~ Isabella ~
I sat at my desk in the Wolfe Corporate Tower in Manhattan. I looked at the bright computer screen. The numbers on the page showed how much money Wolfe Enterprises made this quarter. It was a brand new record.
I smiled and leaned back in my chair. It felt like just yesterday when Nathan and I started this company. We used to work on a tiny folding table in a dusty room. We ate cheap pizza for dinner every night. We struggled so hard to get here. We went through thick and thin. We stayed awake until morning, trying to make our business work. Now, we had a giant building with glass walls. We had hundreds of workers.
The heavy wooden door clicked open.
"Knock, knock," a familiar voice said.
I looked up. Nathan walked into the room. He wore his dark suit, but he was hiding something behind his back.
"You do not have to knock," I said. "This is your building, too."
"I know," he said. He pulled a small, wrapped box from behind his back and set it on my keyboard. "Happy anniversary."
I looked at the box. It was wrapped in shiny silver paper with a white bow. "Nathan, we said no gifts this year. We have the big company merger coming up. We are supposed to be saving our focus."
"I broke the rule, because it's our eight anniversary" he said. He pulled up a leather chair and sat right next to me. "Go ahead. Open it."
I carefully tore the silver paper. Inside a black velvet box sat a simple silver pen. It looked exactly like the cheap plastic pen I used to sign our very first business paper years ago, but this one was made of real metal.
"I found the old plastic one in a box downstairs," Nathan said. "I had a metal worker copy the design. You are my strategic backbone, Isabella. I could not have built this empire without you. Thank you for all your support. Not only as a wife, but as a friend, a supporter, anything good you can imagine."
"Aww. Thank you," I said. I picked up the pen. It felt heavy and cold. I placed it next to my computer mouse. "It is perfect Nathan. But we can continue this celebration later. We still have a board meeting in ten minutes. We need to be ready to show the numbers."
"I am always ready," he said. He stood up and fixed his tie. "Let's go show them our record profits."
I grabbed my file folders, and we walked down the hall together.
We walked into the big meeting room. A long glass table took up most of the space. Nathan's father, Arthur, sat at the very far end. Nathan's younger sister, Victoria, sat next to him.
"Good morning," I said. I pulled out my chair and sat down.
Arthur looked at his silver watch. He did not smile. "You are exactly on time, Isabella. Not early. Just on time."
"We were reviewing the final numbers," Nathan said. He handed out a thick stack of papers to everyone at the table. "We broke our profit record again."
Victoria flipped through the pages. She tapped her long fingernails on the hard glass table. Tap. Tap. Tap. "Anyone can make numbers look good on paper," she muttered. She crossed her arms tightly and stared out the big window.
Arthur picked up his coffee cup. He took a slow sip, looking right at me over the edge of the cup. His eyes were cold and hard. "Let us hope the numbers are actually real," he said.
"They are real," I said. I kept my voice steady and clear. "I checked every single account myself."
"Good," Arthur said. He set his cup down with a sharp clink. "Then let us begin the meeting."
For the next hour, Nathan talked about our future plans. I watched Arthur and Victoria. They whispered to each other while Nathan spoke. Victoria rolled her eyes twice when Nathan mentioned my name. Arthur kept his arms crossed tight against his chest. They did not look happy about the company doing so well. They just looked angry that I was the one sitting next to Nathan and controlling most of the company's account to.
When the meeting finally ended, I walked back to my office alone. I sat down and opened my computer again. I wanted to double-check the bank accounts we kept in other countries. The company had accounts in Europe to pay for big shipping boats.
I opened the secure folder on my screen. I scrolled down the long list of numbers.
Wait.
I stopped scrolling. My finger froze on the mouse. There was a weird line of text. It showed a small amount of money moving out of our account and going somewhere else. I did not know the name of the other account.
"That is strange, what's happening?" I whispered to the empty room.
I clicked on the strange line. The computer screen froze for a second. Then, it loaded another line just like it. Then another. Small bits of money were moving around without my permission.
I quickly picked up my desk phone. I dialed the IT help desk.
"Hello, this is Tom," a voice answered.
"Hi Tom, it's Isabella. I am looking at the foreign bank logs right now. There are some weird numbers showing up here. Did the system run an automatic update last night?"
"Uh, yes ma'am," Tom said. "We updated the software server. Sometimes it makes the numbers look messy for a few hours."
"Are you sure it is just a system glitch?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am. Give it an hour or two. It should fix itself and go back to normal."
"Okay. Thank you, Tom." I hung up the phone.
A glitch. That made sense. Computers made mistakes all the time when they got updated. I wrote a quick note on a yellow sticky pad to remind myself to check the numbers again after lunch. I stuck the note right onto the side of my monitor.
I reached out and grabbed my new silver pen to sign a stack of papers on my desk.
Suddenly, my computer screen went entirely black.
I blinked. I shook the computer mouse. Nothing happened. "Tom, did you turn off my screen?" I asked out loud.
The black screen flashed brightly. A big red box popped up right in the middle of the dark monitor. The box blinked on and off, over and over. Inside the red box, bright white letters appeared.
It was an urgent warning message.
WARNING: ENCRYPTION BROKEN.
I dropped my pen and leaned closer to the screen. Who sent this? I grabbed the mouse and tried to click the red box. It did not close. I looked at the top of the screen for an email address or a sender name. There was nothing. It was completely untraceable. No name, no location. Just the warning.
The red box kept blinking. The red light reflected on my hands. My fingers felt a little cold. I clicked the mouse again, but the screen stayed locked. It just kept flashing its bright warning, over and over again, in the perfectly quiet room. "This is strange" I muttered. "What happening?"
