“You knew all along someone would screw up, didn’t you?” Carl said after a moment of silence.

“Yes,” Isabella replied. He knew what it meant, but it hurt nonetheless.

“I expected it to be you. I was sure you would eventually overstep the Critical Mass Threshold,” she continued. “After your presentation I was pretty sure you had. If it hadn’t been for Rostam I would probably still be mad at you. And I would have voted differently. I’m so sorry.”

Carl rewound Isabella’s explanation of her impolite phone fiddling during the meeting. He had asked for an executive summary of the events happening in parallel this afternoon, and for once, Isabella had indeed stuck to the essentials. He suspected it had more to do with her being emotionally drained than his actual request to skip the details. It didn’t matter; she had given him a valuable recap and he didn’t feel like a lost fool anymore.

Ballentine had Gretchen upgrade the complete live Anna collection. He could only guess that the feds had paid him a visit and Ballentine had learned from his mistake. Unwilling to shut down his operation, he was now setting up a network of gambling sites with a more realistic win/lose distribution. Using not one but hundreds of gambling sites and using not ten thousand but hundreds of thousands Annas, his cash flows would be so dispersed that they were virtually invisible; he was hiding in plain sight. At least, that was probably how Isabella would have done it. Hypothetically, of course; Isabella would never suggest to first destabilize and subsequently corrupt her precious pièce de résistance. Her vote made perfect sense now.

What he didn’t understand was Ballentine’s willingness to lose some of his money to Anna’s cognitive dissonance problem. It told him a few things, though. He desperately needed that money and he would keep Isabella really close for the next weeks if not months. Her sole task would be to get rid of Anna’s unwanted shopping style.

He looked at her. She still was very angry.  A thought hit him.

“You expected me to screw up. Knowing you, that means you have an endgame,” he suddenly broke the silence. “Of course you have an endgame.”

She looked away.

“You didn’t do it. The circumstances are all different now. I never ever foresaw some crook forcing me into money laundry” Isabella replied bitterly.

“Doesn’t matter, Belle. Tell me what you had in mind. It might give us some ideas.”

“I would have shorted our own stock,” she growled through clenched teeth, still looking away. “Or pumped and dumped it. Or both. But that doesn’t apply anymore.”

He had never seen her so upset. He wasn’t sure she had really thought this out in advance; the way she was acting now looked much more like an unscripted emotional response. It made him feel intrigued and disturbed at the same time.

“How would you have done that? You can’t do that yourself; you’re an insider. You would need a bunch of proxies…oh, I see,” he smiled. Of course. They had no shortage of proxies.

“Forget it, Carl. We’re still a private company. I need to think of something else.”

This was true. Still, he admired the elegance of the plan. There was a natural beauty in using Anna’s network and persuasive tactics to avenge their stolen company. In fact, it was pure poetry. His mind started to wander. He closed his eyes and after a while, he knew what to do next.

“Belle, I love the way your brain works, but you need to stop talking in first person singular. You have an ally, and as it happens, that ally just got an even better idea,” Carl rejoiced.

Isabella raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, come on! Don’t be so cynical,” he said, feeling slightly belittled. “Objective Four rings a bell?”

He enjoyed the visible shock on her face.

“You know about Objective Four? I never told you about Objective Four!” Isabella responded, dumbstruck.

“No, you didn’t. But you mentioned it in your Prada Experiment test report,” he said. “And that made me curious, so I asked a few questions here and there. Your lab techs are such show offs,” he winked at her.

Isabella didn’t reply.

Carl was amused now. “Oh, I get it! You never thought I would actually read your report, didn’t you?”

“It was just an annotation! A note to self. It shouldn’t even have been in the final report,” she murmured, obviously feeling exposed.

“Relax Belle. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not interested in why you kept it from me. What interests me is: does it work?”

“It works. But it’s not in the upgrade. I isolated it after we discovered the cognitive dissonance effects. We never followed up on it.”

“Who coded it?”

“Rostam and I. It was just a small proof of concept. But it worked.”

“So it’s not in the upgrade? Where is it then?”

“Probably in some long forgotten branch of our version control system. What’s your point?”

“Oh, puh-lease Belle. It’s a gold mine and you know it. That’s why you never told me about it. You were afraid I would exploit it. Quite rightly so, I may add, because we will exploit it. Can you get it?”

“Yes, but it won’t work without Anna. It won’t work with the current Anna either; it needs to be properly re-integrated and I’m still not sure where you’re going with this.”

He felt her reluctance.

“Just trust me,” Carl interrupted her. “I know it’s usually the other way around and I know you don’t like not knowing all the facts, but right now, you just trust me, OK?” She didn’t respond, but Carl saw she relaxed a little.

“Can you get it without anyone knowing about it? I mean, without the security issues that got Gretchen caught and all. And can you get it NOW?”

Isabella looked up and smirked. “Security issues? I have no security issues. I am security, remember?”

“You won’t be any more on Monday. So do me a favour, and get it please.” He handed her his tablet.

She rolled it out in front of her and started tapping. “I told you: it’s just code. It doesn’t accomplish anything without Anna,” she sighed, while accessing the version control system. “Do you want me to steal the rest of her as well?”

“That won’t be necessary,” he replied. “Why don’t you call Rostam. Now that his ‘girlfriend’ has gotten what she wanted, I doubt he’ll be busy tonight.”

“Girlfriend?” Isabella asked, puzzled.

“You’re not very perceptive when it comes to secret office romances, aren’t you?” Carl replied, charmed by her genuine ignorance.

“He and Gretchen are having an affair. Well, were is probably more accurate. If she hasn’t dumped him already, my guess is he will. So please, call him. Invite him over to my place. I have ten thousand Annas on ice, for you guys to play with,” he added casually.

She stared at him in disbelief. And then, when it had finally registered what he had just said, he could see that she understood what he wanted them to do.

“Carl, you’re a cunning, devious, brilliant bastard,” she said, while hitting the download button and searching for her phone.

“You know, Bella, that’s the first compliment you ever gave me,” he acknowledged, shedding his usual theatrical shell. “Thank you.”

She stood up. He saw her hesitate for a split second but then she stepped forward and hugged him.