Chapter 588

Emily Blair set down her fork, dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin, and walked over at an unhurried pace.
Tristan Davis pushed his laptop toward her. “Look at this. Half a minute ago, Samuel Walker sent the Black and White Rabbit source code to this IP address. I just traced it-it belongs to Ryan Cox.”
Tristan tapped a few keys. “And it’s not just the code. Samuel also sent all the character designs from the art team and the core launch architecture. Looks like they’re planning to clone Black and White Rabbit from scratch.”
“They really couldn’t wait, could they?”
The moment Emily announced she was shutting down the Black and White Rabbit project, they jumped at the chance to start something of their own.
“Where’s Ryan Cox now?” Emily asked.
“Police are still investigating him and Donna Thomas, so for now he’s stuck in the local branch. Not that it’s slowing him down-he’s basically made the rounds of every club in town these past few weeks.”
Conveniently enough, Ryan’s illegitimate son, Lucas Cox, just so happened to be the branch’s general manager.
Emily allowed herself a small smile. “Lucas fought so hard to get control of the branch, and now Ryan shows up out of nowhere. Must be giving him nightmares.”
She stood and patted Tristan’s shoulder. “Thanks for this. Bring Samuel Walker up to see me.”
Elizabeth Wilson had already done a background check on Samuel.
He’d grown up in an ordinary family, kept his head down and studied hard, got into a top university, then landed a job at Vertex International. He had a regular salary, no car, no house—just another anonymous face in the city’s endless commute.
On paper, everything about him looked completely average.
So why had Emily and Elizabeth taken notice?
It started when leaks of new character skins from one of Vertex’s games suddenly appeared online, days before their scheduled release. The investigation led straight to Samuel.
Elizabeth’s first instinct had been to file charges for leaking trade secrets, but Emily stopped her because there’d been a large, unexplained wire transfer to Samuel’s bank account from overseas.
They’d looked into the sender, but the trail went cold every time.
Emily wasn’t interested in just Samuel. She wanted whoever was pulling his strings.
Now, she studied the young man standing before her—so painfully ordinary—and asked, her tone calm and even, “Do you know why I called you here?”
Samuel kept his head down, looking lost. “Ms. Blair, I—I’m not sure
Tristan came to stand beside Emily. “Why don’t you take a guess. What do you think we found out?”
Samuel’s eyes flicked up, nervous. “What do you mean?”
Emily didn’t waste words. “What’s your connection to Ryan Cox? How much did he pay you to do his dirty work?”
Samuel’s eyes went wide, panic creeping into his face. His breath came faster. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Emily’s gaze was icy, every word crisp and clear. “I have all the evidence I need. Playing dumb won’t help you now. What you’ve done is a crime. I could have you charged for leaking corporate secrets.”
“You remember what happened to the last employee who leaked information,” Emily said evenly. “Think about it-do you really think what you got from Ryan Cox will even come close to covering the damages?”
Samuel’s voice shook. “You-what exactly do you know?”
Tristan answered, “The public announcement about shutting down Black and White Rabbit went out this morning. Not even an hour later, you sent out everything-the code, the artwork, the entire game structure.”
Samuel clenched his fists, his face growing paler by the second. “When did you figure this out?”
Emily just looked at him. “Does it really matter?”