Chapter 179: Chapter 180: The Fallout
HAROLD ASHFORD’S POV
Harold’s phone rang, dragging him from the bourbon-induced haze he’d been enjoying in his study. He glanced at the screen and frowned. His IT Director. At one in the morning.
"This better be important, Patterson," he growled into the phone.
"Mr. Ashford, we have a situation." Patterson’s voice was tight with panic. "A major security breach. Someone hacked into our system....got past everything. They copied files, planted a virus, and....sir, they’ve published everything online."
Harold’s blood ran cold. "What do you mean, everything?"
"Financial records. Email correspondence. Internal documents. Everything from the past twenty years. It’s all on a public server now, fully accessible to anyone."
The bourbon glass slipped from Harold’s fingers, shattering on the hardwood floor. "How is that possible? We have the best security money can buy!" We spent millions on our cybersecurity infrastructure! You assured me our system was impenetrable!"
"Not good enough, apparently." Patterson’s voice shook. "Whoever did this is a professional. They knew exactly what they were doing, where to look, how to cover their tracks. And the virus they left behind....sir, it’s sophisticated. Really sophisticated. It’s replicating through our entire network, corrupting files, shutting down systems. We’ve been trying to contain it for the past hour, but....."
"But what?" Harold roared.
"But we can’t stop it. Every time we isolate one section, it pops up somewhere else. It’s like it’s learning, adapting. I’ve never seen anything like it."
Harold’s mind raced. "The files that were published....can you delete them? Take them down?" Submit DMCA requests or something?"
"We’ve been trying, sir. We’ve submitted deletion requests to the hosting platform, but they’re not responding. And even if they did take it down, the files have already been downloaded thousands of times. People are sharing them across social media, uploading them to other platforms, creating mirrors and news sites are picking up the story..."
"What?" Harold’s voice came out as a strangled whisper.
"It’s going viral, sir. #AshfordExposed is trending on Twitter. The business media has already started reporting. The Wall Street Journal just published an article. The Times is preparing one for their morning edition."
Harold sank into his chair, his legs suddenly unable to support him. Twenty years. Twenty years of carefully constructed lies, of buried secrets, of crimes covered up and evidence destroyed. All of it exposed in a single night.
"Who did this?" he demanded. "Who hacked us?"
"We don’t know. They used advanced routing techniques, multiple VPNs, encrypted connections. It’s going to take days, maybe weeks, to trace them. If we can trace them at all."
"I want every resource we have focused on finding them," Harold commanded. "I don’t care what it costs. Hire outside consultants if you need to. Get the best cybersecurity experts money can buy. I want to know who did this, and I want them destroyed."
"Sir, with all due respect...." Patterson’s voice was hesitant now. "We have bigger problems right now than finding who did this. The SEC is going to see these files. The IRS. The FBI. Multiple federal agencies. We need to be preparing for criminal investigations, coordinating with our legal team, developing our response strategy...."
"Don’t tell me what we need to do!" Harold exploded, his carefully maintained control shattering. "You work for me! I pay you a quarter of a million dollars a year to solve problems, not to create them! Now either you fix this mess, or you submit your resignation letter by morning! Do you understand me?"
There was a long, tense silence on the other end of the line. When Patterson finally spoke, his voice was carefully neutral. "Yes, sir. We’ll keep working on it. I’ll call you with updates."
Harold threw the phone across the room, not caring as it shattered against the wall. His chest heaved with rage and panic. Everything he’d built....his company, his reputation, his power...all of it was crumbling.
And somewhere out there, someone was laughing at him. Someone had done this deliberately, maliciously. Someone with the skills and the knowledge to destroy him.
His mind immediately went to Damien Blackwood. It had to be Blackwood. The timing was too perfect. Harold had been trying to sabotage Aria Chen’s return to medicine, had been putting pressure on the hospital, had been working every angle to make her fail. And now, suddenly, his entire empire was exposed?
Blackwood had the resources. The motivation. The ruthlessness to do something like this.
But even as the thought formed, Harold’s strategic mind....the part that had built his empire in the first place....knew it didn’t quite fit. Blackwood was direct. Confrontational. Aggressive. If he wanted Harold destroyed, he’d do it publicly, make a spectacle of it, ensure everyone knew exactly who was responsible. He’d take credit for the destruction because he’d want Harold to know who had beaten him.
This was too subtle for Damien Blackwood. Too technical. Too... elegant.
Unless...
Harold’s eyes widened as a new thought struck him. Unless Blackwood had help. Unless he’d used someone else to do his dirty work. Someone with exceptional hacking skills. Someone who had personal reasons to hate Harold Ashford.
Aria Chen.
The thought hit him like a physical blow. The mysterious girlfriend who’d appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The woman who’d supposedly been just a maid but had somehow captivated one of the most powerful men in the city. The woman who’d secured a position at the most prestigeous hospital in the country despite Harold’s best efforts to sabotage her.
What if she wasn’t just Blackwood’s girlfriend? What if she was his weapon?
Harold grabbed his backup phone and dialed a number he rarely used. A private investigator who specialized in the kind of work that stayed off the books.
"I need everything you to keep track on Aria for me, i want to know everything she does, who she meets and every other thing you can gather about her," he said when the man answered. "And I mean everything. I don’t care how you get it. I want it by tomorrow morning. If you need to assign someone to follow her, do it. i want her monitored every second of the day"
He ended the call and stared at the computer screen showing the uploaded files. Thousands of documents. Decades of secrets. All laid bare for the world to see.
Someone was going to pay for this. And if his suspicions were correct, Aria Chen’s life was about to become very, very complicated.
Harold poured himself another bourbon...a large one this time....and drank it in one long swallow. The alcohol burned going down, but it didn’t help. Didn’t ease the panic, didn’t quiet the racing thoughts, didn’t make any of this better.
He sat in his study, surrounded by the trappings of his success...the expensive furniture, the original artwork, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound first editions....and watched his world collapse in real-time.
And somewhere out there, the person who’d destroyed him was probably sleeping peacefully, satisfied with their night’s work.
But not for long. Harold Ashford didn’t build an empire by accepting defeat. He’d fought his way to the top, destroyed competitors, crushed enemies, survived scandals before.
He’d survive this too. And when he did, everyone responsible would pay.
Everyone.
