Chapter 3

For the next few days, Marcus seemed to disappear.

The silence should have made things easier.

Instead, it only sharpened my temper.

I buried myself in a luxury jewelry rebranding project for the North American market.

It was high-budget, brutally competitive, and exactly the kind of account that changed a firm's standing for years.

Then one afternoon, in the middle of preparing our final proposal, Sophie walked into my office with a tablet and a look I didn't like.

"Check your email."

There was an anonymous message in the inbox.

No subject line.

Just an encrypted archive.

Inside was a PDF.

And inside the PDF was everything.

The decision-making preferences of each board member overseeing the bid.

Their professional histories.

Their favored strategies.

Even notes on personal habits and personality weaknesses.

On top of that, it contained the rival bidder's internal pricing floor.

It was a cheat sheet.

With something like that, our odds of winning would jump by half.

At the bottom right corner of the file was a watermark from one of the top commercial intelligence firms in the country.

I already knew what my gut was going to tell me.

But I called an old contact at that firm anyway.

After a little money and pressure, he finally admitted it.

"A major client commissioned it directly from the top," he said.

"Who?"

"Apex Capital. Marcus Holt."

For a second, all I could hear was blood rushing in my ears.

Of course it was him.

I felt sick.

What did he think I was?

Someone who needed him to rig the playing field because I wasn't capable of winning on my own?

Hadn't he humiliated me enough with that same logic five years ago?

Back then, he had called it protecting me.

Now he was trying again.

I looked at the PDF, then dragged both it and the email into the trash.

Then deleted them permanently.

Still not enough.

Ignoring him felt too generous.

So I called my lawyer.

"I need a cease-and-desist sent," I said. "Today."

The next morning, my law firm sent a sharply worded letter to the intelligence company, accusing them of obtaining non-public competitive information by improper means and attempting commercial bribery.

I copied nearly every major PR head in the industry on it.

Then, before anyone else could frame the story for me, I called Diana, the British executive leading the North American division of the jewelry brand.

"Diana, I need to disclose something," I told her plainly. "We received an anonymous document containing material that could compromise the fairness of the bidding process."

"I can't verify who sent it or whether every detail inside is accurate. But I can tell you this: my firm will not use non-public material to win your business."

"To make that clear, we're scrapping every previous version of our pitch and resubmitting a new proposal next week."

She was silent for a long time.

Then she laughed softly.

"That was the right decision, darling. Brave too. I'm looking forward to your new proposal."

We won the account two weeks later.

And I won it clean.