Chapter 102: Nathaniel’s Discovery

"It seems today is ’the judgment day’ for the Langleys, or so the entire internet has unofficially dubbed it," the anchor stated, "barely a few minutes after leaks of Victor Langley’s alleged involvement in foreign arms dealings, another set of files has surfaced—this time targeting his son, Nathaniel Langley."The screen split to two, one showing the pictures of Nathaniel’s dealings that had ’leaked’ on the Internet.

Like his father, the leaked files contained images that clearly showed his shady dealings.

Captions identified some of the people in it as executives from front companies tied to offshore accounts, arms brokers, and lobbyists linked to questionable operations in the Middle East.

"These images, corroborated by financial transaction records, suggest that both Nathaniel Langley and his father were directly involved in securing contracts for firms later accused of supplying weapons to factions operating outside U.S. approval. While the Langely Corp. legal team has yet to issue a statement, calls for their resignation from both the corporate and advisory roles are already being demanded for online."

The broadcast shifted again, this time to footage of furious reporters gathered outside one of Langley’s subsidiaries. Protesters waved signs: "Langleys = War Profiteers" and "No One Above the Law."

The anchor went on. "Public outrage has intensified. With both Victor and Nathaniel Langley now implicated, political analysts warn that the Langley family’s influence in national security and defense may be irreparably damaged. This appears to be a coordinated exposure aimed at dismantling their empire from the top down. The question remains—who orchestrated it?"

Nathaniel muted the television, the silence in his office suffocating. He leaned forward, elbows on his desk, his mind going through multiple scenarios.

Just as he thought, the person who targeted his father also moved to him next.

And that nagging feeling that OmniTech was behind it hadn’t gone away.

He stood and began to pace.

Dmitri was handling the task assigned to him but that’d take a while so Nathaniel also knew he had to do something to get the situation under control.

First things first, he had to do some damage control. He picked up his phone and thumbed open a contact labeled CRISIS, they were the private PR firm that handled the family’s worst nightmares so he dialed.

"Get me an emergency statement, spin options, and a legal feed," he said, in a low and flat tone. "We need to move fast before this can spiral out of control with no way of salvaging the situation."

"Yes, sir," the voice on the line replied, already getting to work. Within minutes Nathaniel had directives dispatched to legal, to an internal security task force, and to the head of corporate communications.

He authorized immediate audits, ordered servers to be isolated, and instructed the corporate legal counsel to prepare an airtight public rebuttal — but not to rush it; half-assed measures would be worse than silence.

He put the phone down, and walked to the small bar in his office, before pouring himself a glass of whiskey, downed in one go aamd poured himself a glass again.

Nathaniel only stopped after the fourth glass before he walked back to his desk, opened a cabinet and pulled out a couple of files, specifically, files on the research Dmitri had done on OmniTech’s COO, Lillian Hayes.

It might just be the alcohol speaking, but he had a nagging feeling that he had missed something so he calmly went through the files.

On the surface, nothing seemed out of place. Apart from the fact that she had suddenly become OmniTech’s COO from a university student and Best buy part-timer.

Her friends were also as ordinary as she was... And that’s when it hit him.

"Friends," Nathaniel muttered as he flipped through the research done on her before stopping at a certain page.

It contained an image of a blue eyes black haired boy which he had previously dismissed as a wasted genius but something was oddly familiar about the kid.

Turning his PC screen on, he scanned through his files until he stumbled upon the image he was looking for.

Expanding it, the pieces suddenly clicked together. This kid, Ethan Carter, was OmniTech.

How did he come to that conclusion?

It was right before him all along, the avatar that OmniTech used was very similar to the kid’s face.

It also had the same black hair and blue eyes as the kid’s. But just that wasn’t the reason why he was sure that the Ethan Carter kid, was OmniTech because those similarities could be chucked up to coincidence.

But the final piece to his puzzle was the timelines. According to the report before him, Ethan had come into Lillian’s life exactly two weeks before she suddenly quit her part-time job and become OmniTech’s COO.

That might also be a coincidence, but Nathaniel was unwilling to dismiss it as just that.

He leaned back on his chair, a wide smile on his face, OmniTech Corp had been a pain in the ass for too long.

Even if they were not the ones responsible for this mess, they had just lost a pretty important advantage, the anymomity of OmniTech.

Now, Nathaniel could put a face to any attack they made. He could find out Ethan Carter’s weakness and use that against him.

OmniTech Corp was done for, but they just didn’t know it yet.... Or at least that’s what Nathaniel thought.

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{Are you sure about this?} Athena asked, her avatar on Ethan’s screen as she looked at him.

"It’s fine," Ethan said with a chuckle, "his end is already underway and no advantage he gains will change the outcome."

He paused for a short while before adding,

"Besides, that he was always supposed to find out, else this wouldn’t have been so fun," he continued, "although, I’m a bit disappointed it took this long even though I let him get quite a few things about my past."

{I see,} she nodded, silent for a while before asking, {are you sure you don’t want to celebrate the launch party with the company.}

"Nah," he answered as he stood up and stretched, "I’m having enough fun keeping Nathaniel busy, besides Lillian is handling everything pretty well."

That reminded him, "though, I have no idea what Irina is doing there or even when she and Lillian became that close."

{...}

He just sighed and walked out his room,let Nathaniel be excited about his discovery for now, step two would happen in a few hours...

Everything was in place.