Chapter245 I Believe You
Within hours, the hashtag #MirandaCompanyCoretech Plagiarism had been rocket-fueled by an army of bots straight to the top of every trending list.
The comments were a flood of rage.
"Called it. What could a girl in her twenties possibly have built from scratch? Turns out, nothing."
"Someone already broke down the whole evidence chain. It's airtight. She's done."
"I actually thought she was some kind of business prodigy. Nope. Just a thief."
"Get out of the tech industry. Boycott plagiarists."
It was nearly eleven at night. The office lights cast a pale glow across Miranda's face.
Her phone buzzed on the desk. Ava's name lit up the screen.
She answered.
Before she could say a word, Ava's voice came through, clipped and cold.
"The plagiarism story going around about your company. Is it true?"
No small talk. No softening. Just a straight question.
Miranda's chest tightened. She sat up straight.
"Governor Ava, I stake my name and my company's reputation on this. The plagiarism claim is false. The leak was a setup."
Silence on the other end.
Miranda could hear her own heartbeat, hard and fast against her ribs.
Then, a quiet exhale.
"Alright. I believe you."
Ava's tone shifted, warming back into the voice she used when she still had faith in her.
"But Miranda, you know how bad this looks. If you can't clean it up, there's no way you or your company can stay on this project."
She paused.
"The best I can do is buy you three extra days before the final decision."
Something released in Miranda's chest.
In the middle of all the ugliness, all the lies, all the people turning their backs, that one clean, unqualified vote of trust hit harder than she expected.
She blinked fast, pushing the sting back down.
"Understood, Governor. Thank you."
She ended the call, walked into the attached bathroom, and splashed a handful of cold water across her face.
The shock of it cut through the fog.
Since early evening, she and Lisa had quietly run background checks on every member of the founding team. Financials, histories, every thread they could pull. Everything came back clean.
Nothing.
Miranda dried her face, walked to the break room, and made herself the strongest black coffee she had.
The bitter smell settled in around her. She stood at the window, looking out at the city lights, and accepted the fact that she wasn't sleeping tonight.
Two angles left to investigate.
One was the dozen or so rival companies in the clean energy space, all of whom had good reason to want her gone.
The other was...
Her mind went back to the night of the gala. Mrs. Martinez and Arthur, both making her life difficult in front of everyone.
Isabella's situation was her own doing, but Martinez clearly wasn't seeing it that way.
And they had both heard, in plain terms, that she knew Ava, and that she was in line for the new energy project.
Quietly making her life hell in the background wasn't out of the question.
--
On the other side of the ocean.
Two ships cut through the black water, one running, one chasing.
The lead ship was slowing down.
"Damn it." The man at the helm slammed his fist on the console. "Clifton doesn't know when to quit."
He glanced down at the fuel gauge. Nearly empty.
Even if he somehow shook Clifton loose, he wouldn't make it to shore. Either way, he was finished.
A screech of metal cut through the air from the stern.
His stomach dropped. He spun around, one hand clamped over the wound on his arm, still seeping blood.
Several figures had already boarded, moving fast along the ropes.
The man in front stood tall and still, black coat snapping in the wind. His face was striking and completely cold.
Bob stared at the figure closing in from fifty feet away. The hatred in his eyes was almost solid.
Clifton walked toward him, step by step, each one unhurried. His eyes were deep and unreadable. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than the wind and twice as cold.
"It's over, Bob."
Bob laughed. It wasn't the laugh of someone who had lost. It was wild and poisonous.
"So what? You want to take me down, Clifton? Fine. But you and every last one of your people are going down with me. We'll all rot in hell together."
Clifton didn't react. His eyes stayed locked on Bob.
"The flash drive," he said. "Where is it?"
Bob had been one of the people he trusted most.
Clifton had pulled him out of a street fight in Italy years ago, more dead than alive. Since then, Bob had been at his side through everything, helping build Prescott's reach across industries one step at a time.
Clifton had never shorted him. Position, equity, money. He had given Bob more than Bob had ever earned.
And he still couldn't make sense of the betrayal.
Until recently, when he had found something. A thread. Not enough to explain everything, but enough to tell him the full answer was on that flash drive Bob had hidden.
Across the deck, the madness in Bob's eyes kept climbing.
If Clifton wasn't going to let him walk away, then they would end this together.
He raised his hand and let the gun drop onto the deck with a heavy clang.
After days of running, neither side had any ammunition left.
Clifton glanced at it, then turned back and signaled his team to hold.
This one was his.
He moved.
In an instant the two men were locked together, trading blows with nothing held back. The sounds of impact were sharp and heavy against the roar of the wind.
Bob fought like someone who had accepted death and just wanted to make sure he wasn't the only one. Every strike was meant to do damage.
It was exactly the reason Clifton had kept him close all those years.
Neither man could say how long it went on.
Then Bob miscalculated. He left an opening, and Clifton drove a hard punch straight into his chest.
Bob staggered back.
And in that exact moment, something shifted in his eyes. A flash of something calculated and vicious.
His other hand came up. Somehow, at some point, he had palmed a compact pistol no bigger than his fist.
The barrel was aimed directly at Clifton's heart.
The shot rang out, swallowed almost instantly by the crash of a wave.
Both men went over the railing together.
They hit the water.
A wide bloom of dark red spread across the surface.
Then a wave rolled in and wiped it clean.
"Captain!"
On deck, Clifton's team stood frozen for one second before everyone moved at once. They grabbed every piece of rescue equipment they could find and went in after him without hesitation.
Hours passed.
They found nothing but dark water and cold silence.