Chapter 2 - The Sudden Promotion
I stepped directly between my stepmother and the young maid.
I calmly asked Victoria what exactly she believed Annie had stolen.
Victoria sneered and claimed a diamond watch was missing from her private suite.
She demanded that her guards search the utility room from top to bottom.
I held up my hand and explicitly forbade anyone from taking another step.
I informed Victoria that Annie was not going anywhere today or any other day.
I turned around and officially promoted Annie to the position of my personal security consultant.
Victoria let out a loud gasp of absolute indignation.
She warned me that I was making a terrible mistake by trusting a lower class servant.
I smoothly reminded my stepmother that I owned the estate and made the final decisions.
Victoria spun on her heels and stormed out of the hallway with her guards.
Daniel looked at me with deep concern written across his face.
He asked if I truly believed a teenage maid could handle corporate espionage.
I told him that her age did not negate her obvious brilliance.
I ordered Daniel to take Annie to the finest medical facility in Charlotte immediately.
I instructed him to purchase the most advanced prosthetic leg money could buy.
Annie looked at me with wide eyes and quietly tried to decline the generous offer.
I gently told her that she could not protect my estate if she could barely walk.
She finally smiled and thanked me with genuine gratitude in her voice.
By nightfall she returned to the estate walking with perfect fluidity.
The new carbon fiber limb was a masterpiece of modern medical engineering.
I called her into my private study to discuss the listening devices she had found.
She spread a detailed blueprint of the estate across my mahogany desk.
She had marked every single location where a bug had been hidden.
A chilling pattern emerged as I studied the red ink on the paper.
The devices were clustered around the rooms where I conducted my most sensitive business.
Annie pulled a modified radio scanner from her backpack and turned it on.
She explained that the bugs were transmitting their data to a local server.
The server was located somewhere inside the physical boundaries of the estate.
This meant the traitor was actively living under my own roof.
Suddenly the radio scanner began to emit a high pitched warning tone.
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Annie frantically adjusted the dials and looked up at me with sheer panic.
She announced that someone was remotely disabling the perimeter security alarms right now.
