Vengeance in velvet

Cold Calculation

Seraphina’s POV

"Breaking free in a broadcast override of three... two... one..."

The voice of my operative was deep and hard, as if it had been sharpened with a scalpel.

The gilded ballroom of the Grand Plaza Hotel appeared to be malfunctioning on my main wall display. The flash of the cameras went off but was instantaneously frozen by the blinding light. Helena's victorious attitude wobbled, and the HD feeds from all the major networks shook and shimmered, as the smile on Damian's face grew firm.

The television broadcast was interrupted for three excruciating seconds, leaving the viewers in awe with only static on the screen.

Then, the feeds resumed. However, the sound from the cheering crowd wasn't being heard. Rather, a loop of sound started playing on all televisions, mobile phones, and news monitors plugged into the hotel's network.

This is a recording that was made four years ago, it's a private conversation between Damain Thorne and my dad six months prior to the alleged crash.

Seraphina is too stubborn, Charles," said Damian's recorded voice, crisp, clear and unmistakable.

“She feels the Sterling Group is an ethical organization, and if you want Thorne Industries to get the offshore rights, she needs to be off of the board permanently,” she says.

She's my daughter, Damian, my father's weak, trembling voice replied on the tape.

Damian replied without hesitation, "She's an obstacle.

"Barriers are broken down.

The press room was in turmoil.

I leaned into my seat, feeling the beat of my heart pounding in my chest. By zooming in on Damian's face using the thermal and high-def camera feeds my operative had hijacked, I was able to see his face more clearly.

I didn't want to destroy him, I wanted to learn about him. I had to chart all of his cracks.

Damian's sense of calm broke for a split-second. My left eyelid twitched, a tic that I noticed when he lost his stuff in a room years ago. His jaw clenched into a steel rod and the tendons in his neck stood out like steel cables. His cold grey eyes narrowed and raced straight to the press control booth at the rear of the hall. He didn't look sad, or guilty, or ashamed. He seemed like a wolf who realized that he had failed to kill his prey in the trap.

Helena totally broke down right next to him.

Her practiced, angelic smile turned to raw, ugly panic. Her hands went to her mouth, her knuckles turning white as she looked at the sea of reporters all yelling at each other like they were firing weapons with microphones pointed at her. Her shivering hand caught the light, on her canary yellow diamond sparkled mockingly.

I saw her eyes grow large, tears of real fear, not tears of repentance, tears of a spoiled child who knew her pretty little world was on the verge of falling apart.

“Look at you, sister,” I whispered, barely audible over the dark walls of my bunker.

You wanted my crown, so much. What does it feel like when it cuts into your skin?

I couldn't swallow the dark satisfaction, there was a lump that grew in my throat. As I gazed at them squirming, a deep, jagged pain struck my chest.

How I loved them with God's love once.

I recalled sitting on the floor with Helena in our childhood bedroom, braiding her soft hair, while she cried because she had a bad grade, promising her that I would always protect her from the world. I recalled when he looked me in the eye beneath the warm summer light and told me that he was willing to believe in my dreams, that we were going to create an empire together, based on trust.

I had given them my blood, my heart, my whole devotion. They had been in silent rooms, where they had been drinking scotch, and that they had been figuring the market value of my life.

All the micro-expressions on the screen had become something that I had memorized. Damian was cocky and would attack when threatened, instead of backing away to see what was done. Helena was delicate, and if people challenged her social position, she would lose her equilibrium.

They were mightier, indeed! But they were still men. Humans who have huge egos leave a big target at all times.

Damian was on screen, and took the microphone from the podium, his voice drowned out by the screaming of the journalists.

Ladies & Gentlemen Please! Damian's voice was low and composed as he barked.

We are under a corporate eco-terrorist cyber-attack and are trying to disrupt this merger.

The sound that you just heard is a deep-fake created by bad actors.

On security: Press room to be evacuated at once!

In a rush, security guards in black uniforms rushed forward, aggressively shoving back the reporters and even cutting off the power to the primary stage microphones.

Damian grasped Helena by the elbow, his grip so tight I could see her grimace with the pain and pulled her to private backstage.

They're cutting the feed," my operative told me in my ear.

Will you be okay if I drop the second packet?

No, I said, looking back at Damian as he marched away.

Hold on to the second packet.

Gradually if we throw it all at once, they will adjust.

Allow them to swallow the poison gradually.

“OK boss, I'm out.”

All of a sudden, the feed went black as the company raced to a commercial break.

Now my operations room was again quiet. My hands were bathed in the light of the computer screens. They were now more reliable. All shaking was gone.

I opened Damian's private personal file in my secondary monitor.I opened my secondary monitor and brought up Damian's private personal file. I accessed his private calendar, his encrypted private e-mail server and his main offshore holding account in Liechtenstein. The audio leak wouldn't be a legal death sentence. His lawyers will spend millions in court saying that AI can't manipulate something but it has left a doubt in his board of directors.

Thorne Industries' stock would report at least eight percent lower tomorrow morning.

He was bleeding. When a shark bleeds, then the rest of the ocean notices!

My firewall detected an unusual activity just as I was about to close his profile, so I'm starting phase two of my market shorting.

A small 'secondary' data packet was riding on the hotel's cut broadcast feed towards my private network trace.

My brows furrowed. Before it got to my main drive, I quickly isolated it in the sandbox environment.

It wasn't malware. The transmission was encrypted, and was a text-only message, sent from a local device in the backstage of the Grand Plaza Hotel, just as Damian was stepping off the stage.

I could feel my fingers dancing with joy over the keys as I typed away, running the decryption algorithm.

The progress bar came up immediately: 100% Decrypted.

A box with some text appeared on my monitor.

It was not intended to be "Seraphina" or "The Hacker.

It was a childhood nickname that only two people in the world had ever used, the other being my father, who passed away years ago, and another that was supposed to be six feet under.

The message read:

I knew you didn't die on that mountain, Little Bird. Don't let Damian know you're still alive. He didn't only push your car off of the cliff three years ago, he paid the paramedics to ensure you never woke up.