Episode:The threat within
332 Words
Zariah stared at the security footage again.
There it was—Max slipping a flash drive into the server room. Two nights before the AI sabotage.
Dominic stood beside her, stone-faced. “That’s all the proof I need.”
“You’re going to take this to the board?” she asked.
“No. Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because Max knows something about your father.”
Zariah flinched.
Dominic looked at her then, for once unsure. “You’ve been protecting me all this time. Let me protect you now.”
Before she could answer, Dominic’s phone buzzed. His lawyer. Urgent.
Max had filed a formal motion to remove Dominic as CEO. The vote was in two days.
Dominic’s empire was hanging by a thread.
Zariah had to act.
Zariah returned to her father’s hidden drive. There was one file she hadn’t opened—the one marked “For Zariah. If it all falls apart.”
She clicked it.
A confession.
Her father had recorded a video the week before his death. In it, he admitted everything. The fraud. The lies. How he moved money under Dominic’s name to shield Zariah from the bankruptcy. He thought he was protecting her.
But in doing so, he destroyed Dominic’s reputation.
Zariah wept.
This file could save Dominic. Clear his name. End Max.
But it would also drag her father’s memory through the mud.
She paced for hours. Cried. Called her mother, who finally told her: “Your father’s last words were: Don’t let Zariah carry my sins.”
The next morning, she walked into Dominic’s office and handed him a flash drive.
“This will fix everything,” she said, voice steady. “But it will destroy the last thing I have left of my father.”
Dominic took her hand gently. “Then I’ll let it burn. I don’t want to win if it means losing your peace.”
She stared at him, stunned.
That was the moment she fell—completely.
- Writer
