Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 84

I was reviewing video feeds late, well past midnight, when I noticed something strange.

One of the camera feeds, labeled “Cam 3A, Main Angle,” was routing through a third-party filter. A visual enhancement tool, allegedly, to balance light and sharpen focus. But when I checked the source data, the filter wasn’t one the campaign had approved. It was an external plug-in, downloaded from a server I didn’t recognize.

I opened a test playback from last week’s rally.

It took a moment to spot it. A two-second lag. A minor visual shimmer across the bottom of the screen. Barely noticeable unless you were Looking for it.

I was definitely looking now.

My pulse quickened. I double-checked the server log. Someone had installed the filter on multiple feeds. It wasn’t just a rogue test, it was a pattern. And the more I looked, the more it became obvious that whoever had done this knew exactly what they were doing.

I grabbed the footage file, copied the stream log, and sent them both to Nathan with a brief message: “Potential breach. Investigating.”

Then I marched down to Richard’s office.

He was still there, because of course he was, pacing by the windows with a legal pad in one hand and a half-drunk mug of coffee in the other. He looked up when I entered, eyebrows lifting slightly.

“Something wrong?”

I handed him my tablet. “One of the livestream feeds is being run through an outside filter. It could be nothing, but if it’s not, it could mean someone’s been manipulating footage.”He didn’t say anything at first, just tapped through the timestamps and watched the playback. His jaw tightened.

Nathan artived two minutes later, summoned by my warning.

“I checked the plugin,” he said, setting a laptop on the table. “It wasn’t cleared by IT. And the d**d trail leads back to one of the unregistered workstations in the overflow lab.”

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “Can someone edit what goes out in real time?”

“If they know what they’re doing, yes,” Nathan said. “Nothing major.

But enough to tweak lighting, blur details, maybe drop audio for a frame or two. It’s subtle. But in the wrong hands, it’s powerful.”

Righard didn’t speak for a while. Just stared at the screen like it might confess something else.

“Shut it down,” he said finally. “Reroute all footage internally. No third-party anything until this is over. We’re going to have to start untangling every knot Adam tied. Who knows what else he left behind, or who else he gave access to. Until we know, we treat every channel like it’s compromised.”

Nathan nodded. I”ll get the team on it.”

“I want to review every second of footage from the last three events,”

Richard added. “We’re not missing anything else.”

The next few hours were a blur of emergency meetings and hush-hush tech cleanups. I helped coordinate the revised streaming routes, stayed up to manually cross-reference speeches with the final footage, and triple-checked the filter had been completely removed.

The forum went off without a hitch. We double-checked every angle, every feed. There were no glitches. No unexplained distortions. Just clean, boring footage of Richard delivering a pitch-perfect statement on inter-pack trade protocols.

During the debrief, Nathan brought up the footage issue without naming me, referring only to “an anomaly discovered and corrected before broadcast.”

Richard waited until the end of the meeting. Then he looked at me across the boardroom table and said, “That was good work. Thank you.”

Just that. Nothing more. No wink. No hand on my back. No secret code.

Maybe she really did care about her daughter, maybe she’d come out of hiding just to support Jenny through a heartbreak that had humiliated her in front of the entire campaign. Or maybe it was just a convenient excuse. Either way, I was watching.

When the reassignment came through-Report to Sub-Level 3 by end of day—l didn’t even bother trying to fake surprise. Sub-Level 3 was the basement. Technically part of the building but spiritually a whole other world: isolated, buried in records and forgotten data, with no windows and no relevance.

I went to Nathan’s office without knocking. “Did you see this?” | asked, holding up my phone.

He didn’t look shocked. “Yeah. We blocked it before it processed.”

“Jenny?”

“Her login, but not her trail. It’s proxy work. Elsa’s got her fingerprints all over it.”

“God,” I muttered. “She’s not even trying to be subtle anymore. First Adam’s leaking things, now she’s slithering around the halls like she owns them. Maybe she was pulling his strings the whole time.”A few minutes later, Richard arrived. His eyes landed on my phone, and then on me.

“We’re not letting her push you out,” he said. “You’ve earned your place.

We hold steady. We don’t give them what they want.”

Nathan, ever efficient, slid another folder across the desk. This started circulating this morning.”

Richard opened it, but i stepped closer and read over his shoulder. The language was vague, but the implication was loud. No name. No signature. Just the shadow of accusation, crafted to make people talk.