By mid-October, the halls of Drake Industries buzzed with preparations for the company's Winter Expansion Initiative, a massive campaign aimed at launching several new tech-forward service hubs across Southeast Asia. It was the kind of campaign Evelyn lived for with high stakes, high visibility, and the perfect opportunity to finally move from shadows to spotlight.
Except this one came with Genevieve's fingerprints all over it.
"She's co-heading the campaign?" Evelyn said, eyes narrowing at the memo.
"Apparently," Linda muttered without looking up. "Per Alexander's orders."
That was a lie. Alexander had said no such thing. Evelyn knew that because they still met in hushed moments with stolen minutes in stairwells or late-night calls where his voice softened and hers cracked under exhaustion.
He would never knowingly throw her into Genevieve's line of fire.
Which meant Genevieve had found a way to make it look like he had.
That night, Evelyn sat at her apartment dining table, the campaign mock-up in front of her untouched. She stared at the preliminary notes Genevieve had sent, all brimming with vague directives, last-minute changes, and the quiet erosion of everything Evelyn had built.
She was being erased. Strategically. Meticulously. And no one seemed to notice.
No one except Noah.
"You're being isolated," he said two days later as they walked toward the lower-level parking lot, the only place where they weren't constantly surrounded by ears and eyes. "She's rerouting communication. Anything you send to design or strategy, she intercepts and rewrites before they ever see it. Her version gets approved. Yours disappears."
Evelyn exhaled slowly. "She's making it look like I'm slacking."
"She's making it look like you're irrelevant."
Evelyn's grip tightened around the file in her hand. "Can we prove it?"
Noah reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a thumb drive. "I've been collecting copies. Her redlines, timestamps, communication logs and this is key: discrepancies between your version and what's shown to the board."
Evelyn stared at it. "If this gets out..."
"I know." He met her gaze. "You don't just want to fight her, do you?"
"I want to survive her."
Noah smiled grimly. "Same thing, in this case."
At the next leadership alignment meeting, Evelyn sat two seats away from Genevieve in a sleek boardroom lined with frosted glass. Alexander presided at the head of the table, expression impassive but eyes flicking between every speaker with the alertness of a hawk.
Genevieve was all charm, offering sharp insights and strategic suggestions wrapped in silk.
Evelyn stayed silent for most of it. Calculated.
Until Genevieve proposed a pivot in messaging that completely contradicted months of market research.
"We need to be aspirational," Genevieve said, smiling as if the idea had been born from sheer brilliance. "Not hyper-localized. People don't want to see themselves. They want to see who they could become."
There were nods around the room. Familiar ones. Evelyn recognized them as fearful. Safe.
She cleared her throat. "Actually," she said evenly, "the data from the Seoul and Jakarta testing groups suggest the opposite. In fact, engagement increased by twenty-six percent when we featured relatable narratives over aspirational ones."
Genevieve didn't even blink. "That data is preliminary."
"I updated it this morning. It's in the packet," Evelyn replied, voice calm, flipping to the page in question. "Page twelve."
Eyes around the table shifted, turning pages, scanning charts.
Alexander's gaze flicked from Evelyn to the packet, then back to Genevieve.
"Is there a reason we were almost presented a misdirected strategy?" he asked, tone deceptively mild.
Genevieve's smile never faltered. "Of course not. Must've been a miscommunication in the files."
"Miscommunications are dangerous," he said softly.
For the first time in weeks, Genevieve's posture stiffened.
Evelyn didn't gloat. She simply let the silence stretch.
Later, as people filtered out, Alexander brushed past her and whispered, "Nicely done."
But Evelyn didn't smile. Because she knew this was far from over.
That night, her phone buzzed with an unknown number.
The message was short.
Nice move today. But you're playing with crystal, not glass. One crack, and everything shatters.
Evelyn stared at the words for a long moment.
Then she set her phone down, opened her laptop, and uploaded Noah's thumb drive to a private encrypted folder titled "Contingency."
The first crack had appeared.
Now it was just a matter of time.