Chapter 204 - You're late.

Zack walked through the deserted corridor as soon as he hung up on Meera. But then he was met with an empty fully lit up office room with all their car keys bunched in the tea table in front of the couch.

Zack called out a few times, before checking the conference room. But when he found that the conference room was empty, he came back into Shreya's room and picked the book Shreya had picked before making the shelf slide all over again. But since he couldn't go in by himself, he called Akash.

The room and the shelf automatically close behind them as a safety precaution. But to his surprise, it was actually Srinivas who opened to door.

"Your late!" Shreya's voice rang from inside.

The room had four stacks of servers lined parallel to the walls with a system in the front which was hoisted in an elevated platform almost the size of Shreya's office covered on all sides with bulletproof glass walls.

Pritham was operating the system while Akash and Adam were bunching behind him. Shreya stood leaning on the frame of the glass door blocking the entrance… or to be more precise- with her size, she was only blocking half the entrance.

Zack just gave Shreya a smile as he approached her. Srinivas went inside the glass room leaving Zack and Shreya at the entrance.

"Sorry, I was caught up with something…" Zack replied pecking on her temple. "I take you haven't been to your apartment yet? What have you got here…?" He asked walking them inside following behind Srinivas.

"We don't know yet… Pritam is decrypting the drive we found. It was something hid by my dad… so I am hoping it is the evidence we have been looking for…" Shreya said and sat down on the floor on one corner bunching her knees in front of her and resting her back on the glass wall. She leaned back her head and closed her eyes.

She was tired after all. She had come straight to the office as soon as she got down from her flight and had been working for almost 14 hours straight. She wouldn't be human if she was not tired.

The room was absolutely quiet all over again just like it was before Zack interrupted them. Except for Pritham typing away on the system and his occasional grumbling when he hit a wall, nobody else uttered to singe word. After all, Adithya was very proficient when it came to computers and he was very paranoid too. So it was not going to be easy to get inside.

First, they thought they had crossed the hurdle when Shreya first cracked the password Adithya had set in 3 attempts. But then, Pritham found that on top of the password the files itself were hidden under some family photos and were also encrypted. His fingers flew over the keyboard as fast as humanly possible as he tried to decrypt them.

But the more he typed, the more he admired Adithya. After all, he had set this drive almost a decade back. And the technology had evolved so much from then. But Adithya was still able to baffle him. After all, Pritham joined Sri corp. to work was because of his admiration for Adithya in the first place.

He had joined in as an intern and slowly grew. But everything changed when Shreya took over and she accidentally saw him hack into one of the department servers to adjust his attendance.

He thought he was done for… and that he was going to be fired on spot. But then, we are talking about Shreya who had the uncanny ability to catch you off guard which she did.

Instead of firing him, she actually offered a job for him to build a security system he himself cannot beat for a handsome pay.

And when Pritham did exactly that, Shreya gave him a promotion. And as years passed by, she slowly started trusting him and the rest was history.

Everyone within the company thought Shreya was going crazy when she first promoted Pritham as the head of their software development team. After all, he had just been an intern and he was barely 20 when it happened. But Shreya was adamant back then and in all these years, Pritham did not let her down. He excelled beyond her expectations slapping the faces of all the people who ever questioned her judgment.

Pritham had actually developed one of the most commercially successful software of Sri corp. within 2 months of taking over his job as the head of the software development team shutting everyone up without words.

It was also when the company was facing a crisis after losing Adithya.

Administration wise, Anand and Shreya pitched in and handled it. Even though they did not trust Shreya back then, they had trusted Anand. So, no real crisis arose until Ram started making trouble.

But the main crisis was the IT department.

That department was overseen by Adithya directly. And his innovations when it came to technology was practically genius. And they were trying to find someone experienced to fill in his place when Shreya appointed Pritham to that place.

So, you could only imagine the kinda oppositions and doubts Shreya had faced. But she was stubborn and Anand supported her absolutely without hesitation. So, all everyone could do was suck it up and watch in silence.

Many people actually sold their stakes in the Sri corp. at that time.

Sri corp., even though, now it has ventured into almost every single industry one could possibly think of… back then, their major source of income was from Information technology.

But Shreya being the sly fox she was actually bought it herself. That was the main reason why she now holds a whooping percentage of stakes in Sri corp. She made it so that, nobody could ever question her decision ever. Nobody has the power or the means to question her within the company.

Originally, she almost had 80% stakes. But over the years, she had distributed them to people she trusted. Like Zack, everyone in her inner circle has stakes in the company.

And thus, it adds a financial layer to their relationship. IN a way, Shreya was making sure nobody could ever betray her over interests because nobody could give them more than she could.

Shreya would never forgive herself if someone around her stabbed her on the back because of money… which would just mean that she was not good at taking care of them in the first place…