“It might be a hoax,” Everett said, “but I came up here to make sure.”
Simon shook his head as realization dawned on him. “It’s not a hoax. The photo of my servers proves that it isn’t. They must have managed to hack their way through with the help of the servers.”
“How the bloody hell did someone even get a photograph like that?” Everett asked.
There was only one person who knew about those servers. Only one person who had ever seen them other than him. Not even his concierge knew about them. Neither had his former assistant, because he’d never had a reason to give Xander a tour of the place. But Heather knew. Heather had seen them. There hadn’t been a good reason to give her a tour, but at the time he was so desperate to spend time with her that he’d done whatever it took just to be around her. Lust, and his attraction to her, had made him the easiest mark in the world. He’d shown them to her, never once thinking that she would betray him like this.
“I led them right to the servers,” he said.
“What? Why the hell would you do that?” Everett demanded.
Simon didn’t reply. Couldn’t. Because Everett’s eyes were already flickering with recognition.
“You led that woman to your servers?” Everett jumped to his feet, his face reddening. “Do you have any idea what this means?!”
“I know what it means. It means a decade of my work has been handed over to our rivals to do whatever they want with it.” Simon forced down a gulp of air into his lungs. Already, his chest was burning like a huge weight had been dumped on top of him. The only thing worse than having his ideas stolen and handed over to his rivals was the fact that Heather had been the one to do it. The only person he had ever trusted had played him. Destroyed everything he had ever worked for.
“We don’t have any time to waste,” Everett said. “I’m going to the board with this right now. We’ll have to call an emergency meeting.”
This was worse than the photo of him kissing Heather. Much worse. Scandals could be weathered. But his ideas were the foundation that Dover was built on. If they got into their rival’s hands, they could lose everything. Sure, they could get the law involved to try to stop it, but a fight like that took years in court. By the time they sorted it out Dover would have crumbled, and their rivals would have been able to use his ideas before anyone had the chance to stop them.
“Make sure you only get board members. Let’s not get investors riled up over this until we have a concrete plan of action,” Simon said.
“Agreed,” Everett said. “Do we need to get Linda and the media relations team in on this?”
Simon nodded. “We’ll need Linda to try to keep this information from spreading to other websites and forums. Right now, we can’t afford to worry about spin. We have to stop this from getting worse, and go on the offensive against VLA.”
“What about your assistant?” Everett asked. “You’ve got to confront her if we have any chance of scaring her off. She might already have gotten her hands on other sensitive information, but if you confront her now that’s less likely to happen.”
“You’re right.” Simon sighed, Heather’s betrayal cutting through him like a knife. “I’ll confront her the minute she gets into the office.”
Everett marched towards the door and then turned around to face Simon. “I know this couldn’t have been easy for you, Simon, but I appreciate your honesty. You could have protected yourself by covering for your assistant. But you didn’t do that. I want to thank you for doing the right thing.”
Simon only nodded in response before Everett exited the office, leaving him behind to contemplate what he was going to do.
Anger made his jaw clench. Everett’s gratitude to him wasn’t making him feel any better. Doing the right thing wasn’t taking away the sting of betrayal. Because, now, he’d have to confront the only person he had ever truly trusted.