It started with a letter.
A thick, cream-colored envelope arrived at Veloria's headquarters on a Tuesday morning, addressed to the company's legal department though Veloria hardly had a real legal department yet. It was an afterthought, like most startups, an outsourced service that handled contracts and paperwork but little else.
Aruna barely noticed when her assistant dropped the envelope onto her desk.
Another contract? Another boring legal formality?
She didn't open it right away.
She should have.
By noon, chaos had begun to spread.
Reza burst into Aruna's office, his face pale, clutching his laptop.
"You need to see this," he said, voice tight.
Aruna frowned. "What?"
Reza turned the screen around. There it was a full article already circulating on business news networks. The headline screamed in bold:
"Veloria Accused of Intellectual Property Theft by ApexTech Affiliate."
Aruna's heart slammed against her ribs.
"No," she whispered. "This has to be a mistake."
She snatched the laptop from Reza, reading the article in frantic silence.
It claimed that Veloria had knowingly stolen proprietary educational algorithms from a smaller company a shell corporation, it seemed tied secretly to ApexTech's sprawling network.
The story was spreading like wildfire. Social media erupted in heated debates. Investors started calling. Partners emailed, requesting "urgent clarifications."
The letter on her desk.
Suddenly it felt radioactive.
Aruna tore it open with shaking hands.
Inside was a formal cease and desist order, filed by a prestigious law firm, alleging Veloria had breached multiple patents.
The demand: halt all operations within 14 days, or face full litigation.
By 3 PM, the crisis meeting had begun.
Aruna, Reza, Naya, and Vincent sat huddled in the glass-walled conference room, a silence so thick it pressed on their chests.
Vincent broke it first.
"This is tactical," he said grimly. "They set this up. I recognize the law firm they don't move unless someone with real money is backing them."
"Giselle," Naya said bitterly. "It's her."
Reza nodded. "She didn't just want to knock us off balance. She wants to kill Veloria, legally."
Aruna stared down at the cease and desist letter, fingers trembling slightly.
"This is bigger than just a lawsuit," she said slowly. "If this sticks, even the accusation alone can poison us. Investors will panic. Users will doubt us. We could lose everything before we even have our day in court."
The room lapsed into another heavy silence.
Naya leaned forward. "We have to fight back. Deny it publicly. Counter-sue if we have to."
"And burn money we don't have on legal battles?" Reza shot back. "Even if we win, we might not survive the war."
Vincent remained quiet, his eyes calculating.
"We need to know what evidence they claim to have," he said eventually. "If they have real data documents, source code then we're in real trouble."
"How would they even get that?" Aruna asked. "We built everything ourselves!"
No one answered.
Because deep down, they all had the same thought:
Someone had helped Giselle.
Someone on the inside.
The next blow came the very next morning.
Veloria's main cloud hosting partner the one that had recently raised its rates abruptly terminated their service agreement, citing "legal risks" and "concerns about ongoing litigation."
With barely a week's notice, Veloria faced the nightmare of having their entire platform their lifeline yanked offline.
"This is coordinated," Reza said in disbelief during the emergency huddle. "No way these moves are isolated."
Naya slammed her fist against the table. "She's bleeding us dry without firing a single public shot."
Vincent, arms crossed, said nothing.
Aruna closed her eyes, trying to steady her breathing.
Giselle had never aimed for a dramatic confrontation.
She was orchestrating a slow suffocation.
By Friday, the internal cracks had begun to show.
A junior engineer resigned abruptly, citing "personal concerns."
One of Veloria's key advisors ghosted their meetings.
Rumors began swirling on tech forums that Veloria was "unstable," that "the leadership was hiding something."
Inside Veloria's own halls, trust frayed at the edges.
During a heated strategy session, Naya snapped at Aruna something she had never done before accusing her of "underestimating threats" and "living in denial."
Tension crackled in the air.
It wasn't just Giselle's external assault that threatened Veloria anymore.
It was the erosion of belief in the company, in the leadership, in the dream they had all fought so hard for.
That night, Aruna sat alone in the darkened office, the city's lights blinking distantly through the windows.
She scrolled through social media feeds, news sites, investor bulletins.
The narrative was slipping away.
Veloria's name was becoming a warning, not an inspiration.
She wanted to scream.
She wanted to fight.
But most of all, she wanted to understand
How had Giselle gotten this close without anyone seeing it?
The betrayal was still invisible.
But it was there.
Inside their walls.
Feeding Giselle every weakness, every vulnerability.
Aruna clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms.
This wasn't over.
Not by a long shot.
But if Veloria was going to survive, she would have to stop playing defense.
She would have to hunt the traitor hiding among them.
And this time she would show no mercy.