Teach her a lesson

Steve looked a bit nervous as he sat across from Noah, who was clearly not amused by what he had revealed. Though he understood why Noah had asked the question he had but Steve had a hard time answering it. Noah repeated his question with a serious expression on his face and feeling reluctant to let any part of this matter go. "Tell me. How many people are we talking about in total?"

Steve cast his eyes down for a moment, before raising them back up and saying, "Five. As far as I have been able to discover, there are five people who have something to do with Olivia in one way or another." Noah could not believe what he had heard and dropped himself back into the chair. He shook his head in disbelieve as he tried to grasp the situation. This was when Steve said, "There is a positive side to this matter as well." But before he could elaborate any further, Noah instantly responded with "Ché. A positive side? How could there possibly be a positive side to five of my employees betraying me?" Steve let out a soft sigh before replying, "I know it is tough to hear but from what I have found and heard, there are only two who have actually betrayed you. The other three have been threatened into working along and are being paid to make them look guilty as well." This information seemed to have caught Noah's interest and he looked up at Steve with a look of cautious hope in his eyes.

"How do you know they aren't lying now that they have been caught?" Fortunately for Noah, his hope would not be shattered to bits because Steve was able to perfectly explain his statement. "Well, when I caught the first one, he told me a story about how your cousin and Andrew, our director of sales, had forced him to sell your information to Olivia. He claimed that he had walked in on them discussing how they could kick you off your throne and share the power among themselves. Apparently Andrew finds you too modern and thinks your morals are too high. He is also against you allowing people from all floors to have an opportunity to get a position on the top floor. He thinks that by allowing this you have gotten rid of all sense of order and made any form of hierarchy useless. I personally think this is nonsense and that he is simply afraid of losing his own job."

"Tsk, I expected nothing less from James but to think that Andrew would be a rat as well, that I did not see coming. But that still doesn't explain why you think the three out of the five are innocent."

"Well, he then told me that after he had walked in on them, they had started digging in his personal life and had discovered that he had a debt he could not pay. They had offered his loan shark an extra pay-out if he could up the pressure on that debt. Then they offered him a way out that he could not resist. Though he had tried to deny their offer at first, they had threatened to have him killed if he told anything to you. Forcing him to go along. Soon after, he discovered they had done the same to one of the security guards and one of the managers on the seventh floor. Of course I had him tell me their names and called them in to check their story. I had him be present for those talks and he wasn't allowed to speak, and neither was the second person when I had the third come in. But each of them told me the same story and it and the messages and bank deposits confirmed their story as well. So, with that level of evidence I determined that their story checks out."

Noah nodded absentmindedly as he took it all in. "I see. I see. What were the reasons for the other two?"

"Well, one of them had a daughter who had taken some unfortunate pictures of herself that they threatened to publish if he did not cooperate and the manager had apparently done something stupid himself. He had been caught sleeping with his secretary but he is married and they threatened to have it all revealed to his wife."

"Well it is indeed a relief to know that my employees did not willingly betray me but that they were forced into it. At least that means that we don't have a structural problem but just a few bad apples."

"Yes. That is what I thought as well. So, now that we have their identities, I think it we should think carefully of what we will do next. The problem is that if we confront them and Olivia catches wind of this, she might start acting before we are ready to tackle all that she might have prepared in the shadows. But if we do nothing, things might get even worse."

"You are right about us taking action being too dangerous. Instead I think we should take advantage of the fact that we know how and who she is receiving information from and of us having three people on the inside. Let us throw them off and let her look like a fool a few times. That will keep her busy and teach her a small lesson until we can give her the grand exam."