191 Leak

As soon as Liz woke up the next day, she found herself drenched with sweat even though the air conditioning was blasting cold wind all night.

Shaking her head and looking out the window to see that it was still dark, Liz got up anyway, which was very uncharacteristic of her as she was someone who really liked her sleep.

Freshening up, she reached the office at 6 AM, right when the sun had started to come up.

Last night, before she left, Will had given her the envelope containing the keys to her new office and her new ID card, which read 'Elizabeth Redmayne – Director of Operations', and as she looked at it now, she had to admit that it looked really, really good.

She had also picked out a special dress for the occasion of her first day of work as a Director – she was wearing one of her best blouses which was grey in color, and the pencil skirt was a new one that had been tucked away in the corner of her wardrobe since she had bought it a long time ago.

Nodding at the receptionist, Liz was slightly puzzled when she saw a small expression of panic pass through the woman's face, as if she were seeing something she hadn't expected.

Thinking that it might just be because no one usually came into the office at this time, Liz entered the elevator and pressed on the floor where her office was located, expecting to see an empty floor which she could get the grasp of before anyone arrived.

However, to her extreme surprise, the moment the elevator doors opened, a cacophony of noises entered her ears, making her wonder whether she was dreaming.

People were running left and right, and almost the entire floor was occupied, as though no one had left the night before after work hours were done.

With wide-open eyes, Liz looked around incredulously, wondering what had gotten into all of these people.

She even pinched herself to check, and winced with shock when she realized that this was reality – for some reason, almost none of the employees on this floor had gone home last night, which was quite evident from their haggard eyes and the sharp smell of coffee that pervaded the entire room.

As soon as she got off the elevator, a woman who had been hurrying past with a stack of papers in her hand saw Liz and skidded to a halt, dropping the papers and looking at her as if she had seen a ghost.

"M – Ms. Elizabeth! You're not supposed to be here this early! I mean… Welcome?"

Raising an eyebrow, Liz walked up to the women, and slowly, the others on the floor also started to become cognizant of the fact that their boss was here much earlier than they had expected.

One by one, they started to stop what they were doing and stand up with expressions that ranged from panic to alarm to even fear.

The layout of the floor was like most typical IT offices, with cubicles separated by partitions. Although the cubicles here were much larger, that was still common.

On one side of the floor, there were two individual offices with glass doors, and on one of them, Liz's name had been freshly painted, along with her designation.

As if hearing the floor goes silent, a man exited that room with a very irritated expression on his face before exclaiming, "Why did you all stop? I need this to be done before that woman gets here!"

Of course, it was her secretary who had vexed her so much last night.

Her eyebrow twitching once again as it usually did when she was irritated or angry, Liz started walking towards him, which made him turn toward her due to the sound of her heels hitting the floor.

This made him step back with shock, too, before he said, "Why – You're not supposed to be here!"

"And why is that?"

As Liz asked this in an ice-cold tone, the secretary blinked, and even though that attitude of looking down on her that he had last night was still present, he couldn't help but gulp on seeing her expression of extreme seriousness.

So, he just said, "We had a leak. All the details of the project have been leaked to both the high-end restaurants and the fast food chains which are direct competitors of our client. Whenever this happens, the company faces a multi-million-dollar lawsuit, and the department responsible faces a large number of layoffs. So, we've been working since last night trying to identify who the culprit is, but we are no closer to an answer regarding that."

His shoulders were slumped in defeat, and it was as if what he had just said had taken a lot out of him, as he exhaled a deep breath and looked to the side with shame.

Liz had to take a few moments to comprehend what he had said. For any business, core ideas and plans of implementation were closely guarded secrets that would definitely result in a lot of losses if they were leaked. Hence, every company had a very strong system to prevent this from happening, but it seemed that that had been rendered futile in this case.

It was her first day of work, and there was already such a big mess to deal with.

Usually, hearing this, Liz would have automatically drawn the deduction that this was the work of the secretary himself, as this action would almost certainly result in her failing the task that she had been assigned to in order to test her capabilities. She knew he wanted that, so he had the perfect motive to make this leak.

However, seeing him now, her gut told her that he wasn't responsible, so she decided to trust it.

Besides, it wasn't like she had never played a game with a handicap, and that was what this exactly was.

Someone was out to make her fail, but she was definitely going to make them rue the day that they had thought of targeting her.

So, taking a deep breath, Liz said, "What's done is done. Gather the team in the meeting room. As you are all here anyway, let's have a talk."