CHAPTER 38:The Gambit

Marcus was out of patience.

He'd spent the morning trying to rally the remnants of his old circle, but loyalty was now a currency he could no longer afford. Gerald was gone. Serena had gone silent. Even Victor, his most pliable puppet, was suddenly "reconsidering his future."

He needed leverage.

So he went back to the vault.

Not a literal one—no, this vault lived in a server, hidden beneath layers of encryption and plausible deniability. Years ago, Marcus had started gathering dirt: on board members, on rival CEOs, on Anita herself. Just in case.

He'd told himself it was insurance.

Now it was all he had left.

He selected the folder labeled "Project Phoenix"—a code name he barely remembered attaching to an old internal investigation. He scanned quickly—untraceable funds, NDA payoffs, a trail Anita had once buried when shielding a whistleblower. If spun correctly, it could make her look complicit.

He smiled for the first time in days.

He didn't have to win.

He just had to dirty the boardroom floor enough to pull her down with him.

Meanwhile, Anita stood in the shadows of a soundproof conference room, watching Elise hand over sealed briefing envelopes to three board directors.

"Stick to the talking points," she said. "And let the numbers speak louder than the scandal."

Each packet contained projected earnings for the next quarter under Elise's reforms, along with a full outline of Marcus's shell companies, funneled funds, and—most crucially—the confidential tipoff from an anonymous source about potential shareholder deception.

Of course, the source wasn't anonymous.

It was Anita.

But it would be Elise's name on the internal report.

Distance was part of the trap.

By the time the directors left the room, they carried more than papers—they carried ammunition.

Anita watched them go, her gaze unreadable.

"Elise," she said softly, "he's going to make a move soon. Something reckless."

"Let him," Elise replied. "We've set the perimeter."

"No," Anita said, her voice cold and clear. "We've baited the kill zone."

Across the city, Marcus hit send on an encrypted email to a corporate media contact.

The subject line read: "GNV Secrets the Board Doesn't Want You to See."

He leaned back, confident.

The game wasn't over.

He'd just raised the stakes.

But in Anita's world, stakes meant nothing if you controlled the clock.

And Marcus was already out of time.