The little green light beside Priya Mehta's laptop camera blinked steadily, a cyclops eye witnessing what would become, in the peculiar fashion of modern times, a most unusual crime scene. She adjusted her earbuds and glanced at the quartet of faces arranged in neat squares on her screen—a twenty-first century séance, though none of them yet knew they would soon be communing with the dead.
"Shall we begin?" Marcus Okonkwo's voice carried that particular quality of compressed audio that had become the soundtrack of contemporary business. His face, illuminated by the harsh light of his Lagos office, dominated the upper left corner of the screen. Behind him, through floor-to-ceiling windows, the Atlantic Ocean glittered in the afternoon sun.
"One moment, Marcus," said Lars Andersson, his Swedish accent barely perceptible after years of international collaboration. "My connection is—" His image froze mid-gesture, pixelated hand suspended in air like a digital fossil, before suddenly snapping back to motion. "—there we go. Apologies."
From her apartment in Toronto, Chen Wei-Lin permitted herself a small smile. As Legal Counsel, she had learned to read the semiotics of virtual meetings—the calculated backgrounds, the strategic mute buttons, the deliberate delays that bought thinking time. Today's meeting, she sensed, would require all her observation skills.
"No Isabella yet?" Priya asked, though the empty square in the bottom right corner of her screen provided its own answer. She touched the small Ganesha statue on her desk, a nervous habit she'd developed during these tense pre-merger meetings.
"I'm here, I'm here!" Isabella Rodriguez's face suddenly materialized, her Barcelona apartment's exposed brick walls creating a rustic backdrop. "Sorry, everyone. The connection from Spain has been terrible today. Solar flares or something, they're saying."
Marcus cleared his throat—a sound that emerged from five different speakers in five different time zones with a peculiar synchronicity. "Now then, as you all know, today we must make a final decision regarding the Nexus Corporation acquisition offer."
The silence that followed had a quality unique to virtual meetings—not quite empty, filled instead with the subtle electronic hum of suppressed microphones and the ghostly presence of breathing carefully directed away from sensitive pickups.
"Thirty million dollars," Priya said finally, her fingers unconsciously moving to the spreadsheet open on her second monitor, invisible to the others. "It's more than fair, Marcus. Our burn rate is—"
"Our burn rate is manageable," Marcus interrupted, his chairman's prerogative asserting itself across fiber optic cables and satellite links. "What isn't manageable is selling our soul to a company that will shelve our carbon capture technology in favor of their own inferior product."
Lars unmuted himself with a soft click. "Inferior is perhaps too strong a word, Marcus. Their technology has certain... advantages."
"Advantages?" Marcus's eyebrows rose, a gesture perfectly captured by his high-definition webcam. "Lars, you yourself said their efficiency rate was fifteen percent below ours."
"I said that, yes," Lars replied, his pale blue eyes steady on the camera. "But efficiency isn't everything. Scalability matters too."
Chen Wei-Lin watched this exchange with the attention of someone trained to detect subtext in seemingly straightforward conversations. She noticed how Lars's eyes occasionally flicked to something off-screen, how Isabella had positioned her camera to obscure most of her room, how Priya's fingers hadn't stopped their nervous dance across invisible keys.
"Perhaps," Chen interjected carefully, "we should review the terms once more. Isabella, you've been liaising with Nexus. Could you share the latest proposal?"
Isabella nodded, her dark hair catching the Mediterranean light streaming through her windows. "Of course. Let me share my screen." She paused, clicking through invisible windows. "That's odd. I can't seem to... hold on."
It was precisely 3:47 PM GMT when it happened.
Marcus had just reached for his coffee mug—a simple white ceramic bearing the TerraVolt logo—when his expression changed. It was subtle at first, a tightening around the eyes that might have been annoyance or concentration. Then his hand moved to his chest, fingers splaying across his crisp white shirt.
"Marcus?" Priya's voice carried a note of concern. "Are you alright?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words emerged. Instead, a strangled sound escaped his lips, barely audible through the meeting software's noise suppression algorithm. His eyes widened with what appeared to be genuine surprise—the look of a man who had just understood something terrible and unexpected.
The coffee mug slipped from his fingers, disappearing below the camera's view. They heard it shatter, the sound crystalline and shocking in its clarity.
"Marcus!" Isabella's scream cut through the digital space. "Someone call—what's the emergency number in Nigeria?"
But it was already too late. Marcus Okonkwo lurched forward, his face filling his camera's view for one terrible moment—eyes bulging, mouth gasping like a landed fish—before he collapsed sideways, disappearing from view. His camera, knocked askew, now showed only a sideways view of his office wall, a framed photograph of his family visible in the corner.
The four remaining board members stared at their screens in shocked silence. The meeting software, indifferent to human drama, continued to display Marcus's feed, the green light beside his name still indicating an active connection.
"We need to call someone," Chen said, her legal training overriding her shock. "The authorities in Lagos. His assistant—"
"Wait." Lars's voice cut through her words with unexpected sharpness. "Nobody disconnect. Nobody do anything yet."
"What are you talking about?" Priya demanded. "Marcus needs help!"
"Marcus is beyond help," Lars said quietly. "Look at the timeline. That wasn't a heart attack. The way he clutched his chest, the suddenness of it..."
"You're not suggesting—" Isabella began.
"I'm stating a fact. Marcus Okonkwo was murdered. And since we were the only ones in contact with him..." Lars paused, letting the implication settle like sediment in still water. "One of us is responsible."
The accusation hung in the digital space between them, pixels and data packets carrying the weight of suspicion across continents.
"This is absurd," Priya said, but her voice lacked conviction. "We're not even in the same country as Marcus. How could any of us—"
"The coffee," Chen interrupted, her analytical mind already working through possibilities. "He was drinking coffee. Someone could have—but no, that's impossible. Unless..."
"Unless someone had access to his office beforehand," Isabella finished. "But who would—" She stopped abruptly, her face paling.
"Or," Lars added thoughtfully, "unless it wasn't the coffee at all. There are other ways. More... modern ways."
They all fell silent, contemplating this. In the strange democracy of virtual meetings, they were equally suspect and equally vulnerable, four squares on a screen, each hiding unknown depths behind carefully curated backgrounds.
"We should document everything," Chen said finally. "Our locations, our alibis—"
"Our alibis?" Priya laughed bitterly. "We all have the same alibi. We were here, on this call, watching it happen. That's the problem, isn't it? We're all witnesses and we're all suspects."
"Then we investigate," Lars said simply. "We know one of us did this. We know why—the merger, it has to be about the merger. Marcus was the only one completely opposed to it."
"That gives all of us motive," Isabella pointed out. "We all stood to gain from the acquisition."
"Some more than others," Chen said quietly, her eyes moving between the faces on her screen.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Priya's voice carried a defensive edge.
"Just that our financial situations are... varied. Some of us might have more pressing needs for the merger bonus than others."
Priya's face flushed. "If you're implying—"
"I'm not implying anything," Chen said calmly. "I'm merely pointing out facts. For instance, Priya, that appears to be a notice from Mumbai Mercantile Bank on your desk. The red letterhead is quite distinctive."
Priya's hand moved involuntarily to cover the paper, her movement tracked by four pairs of watching eyes. "That's... that's private."
"Nothing is private when murder is involved," Lars observed. "And while we're sharing observations, Isabella, that photograph behind you—isn't that you with David Nexus? The CEO of the company trying to acquire us?"
Isabella turned sharply, as if just remembering the photo's presence on her bookshelf. "That was years ago. We dated briefly in business school. It means nothing."
"Does it?" Chen asked. "You never disclosed this relationship to the board."
"Because it wasn't relevant!" Isabella protested. "It ended a decade ago."
"Yet here we are," Lars said, "with Marcus dead and you having a personal connection to the one person who most wanted him out of the way."
"That's rich coming from you, Lars," Isabella shot back. "Should we discuss your recent patent applications? The ones filed with the European Patent Office last month?"
Lars's composed expression flickered. "I don't know what you're referring to."
"Patent application EP-3901245," Chen recited from memory. "Carbon capture methodology using selenium-based catalysts. Filed under your personal name, not TerraVolt's. That's a violation of your employment contract, Lars. And it's remarkably similar to the technology Nexus claims to have developed independently."
"You've been spying on me?" Lars's voice was dangerously quiet.
"I've been doing my job as Legal Counsel," Chen replied evenly. "Due diligence requires investigating potential conflicts of interest."
"Then you'll know," Priya interjected, her earlier defensiveness replaced by calculation, "about Chen's own interesting activities. Tell us, Wei-Lin, about your meetings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The ones you didn't report to the board."
Chen's composure finally cracked. "How did you—"
"I'm the CFO," Priya said. "I see all the expense reports. Three trips to Washington D.C. in the last two months, all filed under 'routine compliance reviews.' But the SEC doesn't do routine reviews, do they? Not unless someone tips them off about potential irregularities."
The four squares on the screen now seemed less like a meeting and more like a chess board, each participant both player and piece in a game whose rules were being written in real-time.
"So we all had secrets," Isabella said slowly. "We all had reasons to want change. But only one of us killed Marcus."
"The question is how," Lars said, his analytical mind reasserting itself. "We've established opportunity—we all had access to Marcus in some way. We've established motive—we all had reasons to want the merger to proceed. But method... that's where the answer lies."
"The coffee seems most likely," Chen said. "Poison administered beforehand."
"But Marcus always made his own coffee," Priya pointed out. "He was particular about it. Ethiopian beans, French press, exactly four minutes brewing time. He mentioned it in every interview he ever gave."
"Then perhaps something in his office?" Isabella suggested. "Contact poison on his keyboard or—"
"Look at his hands," Lars interrupted, rewinding his recording of the meeting. "No gloves, no unusual marks. Contact poison would leave traces."
They all leaned closer to their screens, studying the frozen image of Marcus in his final moments.
"There," Chen said suddenly. "His neck. Just above the collar. Is that a mark?"
They examined the image with the intensity of art historians studying a suspected forgery. Indeed, there appeared to be a small red mark on Marcus's neck, barely visible against his dark skin.
"An injection?" Isabella breathed. "But how? He was alone in his office."
"Was he?" Lars asked. "How do we know? We can only see what his camera showed us."
"His assistant would have knocked," Priya said. "Marcus always locked his door during board meetings. He was paranoid about industrial espionage."
"Paranoid," Chen repeated thoughtfully. "Or prescient."
They contemplated this in silence, the weight of Marcus's absence growing heavier with each passing moment. His camera still broadcasted its sideways view of his office, a digital memorial to a life ended.
"We're approaching this wrong," Isabella said suddenly. "We're thinking like this is a conventional murder. But it's not. This is a twenty-first-century crime. Digital. Remote. We need to think about what's possible with technology."
"You mean like hacking?" Priya asked skeptically. "You can't hack someone to death."
"Can't you?" Lars's fingers were moving rapidly off-screen, presumably typing. "What about Marcus's insulin pump?"
The words fell into their conversation like a stone into still water, sending ripples of realization across four faces.
"Marcus was diabetic," Chen said slowly. "Type 1. He mentioned it during our insurance review."
"An insulin pump connected to his phone," Lars continued, his voice taking on the tone of someone solving an equation. "Which could theoretically be accessed remotely if someone had the right credentials."
"That's murder by algorithm," Isabella whispered. "Forcing an insulin overdose through his own medical device."
"It would explain the symptoms," Priya added, her medical knowledge from her pre-business degree surfacing. "Confusion, chest pain, sudden collapse. Severe hypoglycemia can mimic a heart attack."
"But who among us would have that capability?" Chen asked, though her eyes were already moving toward Lars's square on the screen.
"Don't look at me," Lars said. "Yes, I have the technical knowledge, but so does anyone with decent programming skills and access to YouTube tutorials. The real question is who had access to Marcus's medical information and device credentials."
"His medical information would be in his personnel file," Priya said slowly. "Which I have access to as CFO."
"And I have access to as Legal Counsel," Chen added.
"And I have access to as Head of Operations," Isabella contributed.
"And I could hack into with about thirty seconds of effort," Lars finished.
Another digital stalemate. They were like suspects in an Agatha Christie novel updated for the age of Silicon Valley—each with means, motive, and opportunity, separated by thousands of miles yet intimately connected through fiber optic cables and shared culpability.
"Wait," Chen said suddenly. "The timing. Think about the timing. Marcus died at exactly 3:47 PM GMT. But insulin takes time to work, even a massive dose. So the command to his pump would have been sent earlier. During our meeting."
"We were all on camera," Isabella protested. "We would have seen—"
"Would we?" Chen interrupted. "We're all multitasking constantly. Second screens, phones, tablets. Any of us could have sent a command while appearing to pay attention."
"Check the recording," Lars suggested. "Look for moments when someone's eyes moved away from the camera. When their hands moved off-screen."
They all began reviewing their recordings, each studying the others with the intensity of detectives examining surveillance footage. The mundane gestures of a routine board meeting now took on sinister significance—every glance away from the camera a potential moment of murder, every off-screen hand movement a possible weapon deployment.
"There," Priya said suddenly, freezing her recording. "Isabella, at 3:31. Your hands disappear for almost thirty seconds."
"I was adjusting my laptop position," Isabella defended.
"And Lars at 3:35," Chen added. "You muted yourself and looked down."
"I was coughing. I didn't want to disturb the meeting."
"Priya at 3:38," Isabella countered. "You reached for something off-screen."
"My coffee mug!"
"And Chen at 3:41," Lars observed. "You were typing something."
"Meeting notes!"
They stared at each other through their screens, each protest sounding increasingly hollow. The democratic nature of virtual meetings had become a liability—they all had the same opportunities, the same technological shields to hide behind.
"This is getting us nowhere," Chen said finally. "We need to think about this differently. Not who could have done it—we all could have. But who would have. Who had the most to gain?"
"The merger bonus would save me from bankruptcy," Priya admitted quietly. "My husband's medical bills... the treatments aren't covered by insurance. I need that money."
"And I need it to happen quickly," Isabella added, "before David—before Nexus—realizes our technology has a fatal flaw that Marcus refused to acknowledge."
"What flaw?" Lars demanded.
Isabella sighed. "The carbon capture rate degrades over time. After six months, efficiency drops by forty percent. Marcus knew but believed we could fix it. I... disagreed."
"So you were protecting the company by eliminating Marcus?" Chen asked.
"I was protecting all of us," Isabella said firmly. "Our investors, our employees. If the truth came out after the merger, Nexus would absorb the loss. If it came out before..."
"We'd all be ruined," Priya finished.
"Not all of us," Lars said quietly. "Some of us have contingency plans."
"Your patent applications," Chen realized. "You were planning to jump ship anyway."
"I was exploring options," Lars admitted. "Marcus's stubbornness was going to destroy everything we'd built. Sometimes leadership needs to change for an organization to survive."
"Spoken like a true murderer," Isabella said acidly.
"Or a pragmatist," Lars countered. "We're all pragmatists here. That's why we're in business, not academia."
"One of us is more than a pragmatist," Chen observed. "One of us is a killer."
The word hung between them again, stark and uncompromising. On Marcus's feed, the sideways view of his office continued its silent broadcast, the family photo a reminder of the human cost of their corporate maneuvering.
"The insulin pump," Priya said suddenly. "If that's really how it was done, there would be digital footprints. An IP address, a login record. Something traceable."
"Unless the killer was careful," Lars said. "VPNs, proxy servers, spoofed credentials. It's not difficult to hide one's digital tracks."
"But it takes knowledge," Chen pointed out. "Specific technical knowledge."
"Or money to hire someone with that knowledge," Isabella added.
They were circling again, each accusation met with a counter-accusation, each theory spawning three more. It was Chen who finally broke the cycle with an unexpected observation.
"Marcus's coffee mug," she said suddenly. "The one that broke. Did anyone else notice the logo?"
They all looked blank.
"It was our company logo," Priya said. "So?"
"So Marcus was very particular about that mug," Chen continued. "He'd had it since our founding. Never used anything else during meetings. It was practically a superstition with him."
"Your point?" Lars asked impatiently.
"My point is that someone sent him a new mug last week. An exact replica, according to the gift note. I saw it in the office mail log. But the sender was anonymous—paid with cryptocurrency through an online custom printing service."
"Someone replaced his mug?" Isabella asked, confused.
"Think about it," Chen said, her voice taking on the tone of a prosecutor building a case. "A new mug, identical to the old one. Marcus wouldn't notice the switch, especially if it was done carefully. But what if the new mug was more than just ceramic and glaze?"
"You're suggesting the mug was weaponized?" Lars's skepticism was evident.
"I'm suggesting it could have been," Chen replied. "Embedded electronics, triggered remotely. Not to hack his insulin pump, but to deliver something else. A poison perhaps, released when the mug reached a certain temperature. Or an ultrasonic pulse designed to trigger a cardiac event. The possibilities are numerous if you have the right resources."
"That's incredibly far-fetched," Priya protested.
"Is it?" Chen asked. "We're living in an age where people are assassinated with radioactive tea and nerve agents on door handles. Is a weaponized coffee mug really so impossible?"
They all turned their attention back to Marcus's feed, to the broken mug somewhere off-camera. Evidence, but evidence they couldn't reach, couldn't examine, could only speculate about from thousands of miles away.
"If that's true," Isabella said slowly, "then we need to think about who would have access to such technology. Who would have the connections to arrange something so elaborate."
"Someone with ties to corporate espionage," Lars suggested, his eyes moving deliberately to Isabella's screen.
"Or someone with connections to organized crime," Isabella shot back, looking at Priya.
"Or someone with government contacts," Priya added, focusing on Chen.
"Or someone with the technical knowledge to build it themselves," Chen concluded, returning to Lars.
Once again, they had come full circle. But something was different now. The quality of their suspicion had changed, sharpened by the realization that one of them wasn't just a murderer but a planner, someone who had prepared for this moment with careful deliberation.
"There's something else," Lars said suddenly. "Something we haven't considered. What if Marcus wasn't the only target?"
The question sent a chill through the virtual space.
"What do you mean?" Priya asked, her voice smaller than before.
"I mean," Lars continued carefully, "what if this is just the beginning? We all opposed Marcus on various issues. We all have secrets that could damage the merger. What if the killer isn't done?"
"You're trying to scare us," Isabella accused, but her face had paled.
"I'm trying to make us think," Lars corrected. "If one of us was willing to kill Marcus, what's to stop them from killing again?"
"The fact that we're all suspicious now," Chen said firmly. "The element of surprise is gone."
"Is it?" Lars asked. "We're all sitting in our separate locations, vulnerable, connected only by this call. Any of us could be next."
"Stop it," Priya demanded. "This isn't helping."
But Lars continued, relentless. "Isabella, you're alone in your apartment. Chen, you're in your home office. Priya, you're—where are you exactly? That doesn't look like your usual background."
Priya hesitated. "I'm at a hotel. In Mumbai. I had to travel for... personal reasons."
"Medical reasons?" Chen guessed. "Your husband?"
Priya nodded reluctantly.
"So you're alone in an unfamiliar place," Lars observed. "How convenient for someone who might want to—"
"Enough!" Isabella's shout cut through his speculation. "We're not going to solve this by terrorizing each other."
"Then how do we solve it?" Priya asked desperately. "We can't stay on this call forever. Eventually, we have to disconnect, to trust that whoever killed Marcus won't come for us next."
"Or," Chen said thoughtfully, "we solve it now. Together. Before anyone disconnects."
"How?" Isabella demanded.
"By being logical," Chen replied. "By examining the one piece of evidence we haven't fully considered."
"Which is?"
"The timing," Chen said. "Not of Marcus's death, but of everything that led up to it. The patent applications, the SEC meetings, the personal debts, the secret relationships. They all emerged recently, all within the last few months. Almost as if..."
"As if someone was orchestrating them," Lars finished, understanding dawning in his eyes.
"Exactly," Chen confirmed. "Someone has been moving pieces into position, creating pressure points, ensuring that when Marcus died, we'd all look guilty."
"But that would require intimate knowledge of all our lives," Isabella protested. "Access to our personal information, our finances, our communications."
"The kind of access," Priya said slowly, "that someone in Marcus's position would have. As CEO, he had override access to all company systems, all company intelligence."
"You're suggesting Marcus orchestrated his own murder?" Lars asked incredulously.
"I'm suggesting," Chen said carefully, "that someone with CEO-level access did. And that access didn't die with Marcus."
They all fell silent, the implication settling over them like a shroud.
"The succession plan," Isabella whispered. "If Marcus dies, who becomes interim CEO?"
"According to our bylaws," Chen recited, "the board votes on an interim replacement from among its members."
"But with Marcus dead and the four of us under suspicion..." Priya trailed off.
"The decision would fall to the only board member above suspicion," Lars completed. "The one with the perfect alibi."
As one, their eyes turned to the fifth square on their screens, the one that had been empty at the start of their meeting. The one they'd all forgotten about in the chaos of Marcus's death.
"Where's Richard?" Isabella asked suddenly. "Richard Brennan, our external board advisor. He was supposed to be on this call."
"He sent his apologies," Chen said slowly, pulling up an email. "Technical difficulties. Said he'd review the recording later."
"Technical difficulties," Lars repeated. "How convenient."
"Richard has been pushing for the merger harder than anyone," Priya recalled. "He stands to make millions from his advisory shares."
"And he's the one who recommended the insulin pump brand to Marcus," Isabella added, memory surfacing. "Said his brother-in-law was a diabetic, swore by that particular model."
"The networked model," Lars said grimly. "The one with remote monitoring capabilities."
"Richard's background is in cybersecurity," Chen remembered. "Before he became a corporate advisor. He would know exactly how to hack a medical device."
"And how to cover his tracks," Priya added.
"But Richard wasn't on the call," Isabella protested. "We all saw Marcus die. Richard wasn't here."
"Wasn't he?" Chen asked. "Lars, can you check the participant log? The detailed one?"
Lars's fingers flew across his keyboard. His face went pale. "There was a fifth participant. Logged in with no video or audio. Anonymous guest access."
"He was watching," Isabella breathed. "Watching to make sure it worked."
"And listening to us accuse each other," Priya added bitterly. "We've been performing for him this entire time."
"The question is," Chen said quietly, "is he still listening?"
They all looked at their screens with new paranoia. The anonymous participant was no longer shown in the log, but that meant nothing. There were ways to hide, ways to lurk in digital shadows.
"We need to call the police," Isabella said firmly. "All of us, in our respective countries. Report this immediately."
"With what evidence?" Lars asked. "Everything we have is circumstantial. Digital breadcrumbs that a good lawyer could explain away."
"Then we get real evidence," Chen said. "Marcus's office needs to be treated as a crime scene. The mug tested. His insulin pump examined."
"That'll take time," Priya pointed out. "And in the meantime, Richard walks free. Probably destroying evidence as we speak."
"Unless..." Isabella started, then stopped.
"Unless what?" Chen prompted.
"Unless we make him reveal himself," Isabella continued. "If he's listening, if he's as arrogant as I think he is, he won't be able to resist correcting us if we get something wrong."
"You want to bait him?" Lars asked.
"I want to catch him," Isabella corrected. "Chen, you said the mug was sent last week. But you're wrong. It was sent two weeks ago."
Chen started to correct her, then understood. "You're right. Two weeks ago. And it wasn't sent to the office. It was sent to Marcus's home."
"Where Richard had been a dinner guest the night before Marcus brought it to the office," Priya added, catching on.
"He must have made the switch then," Lars contributed. "During dinner. Marcus would never have noticed."
They continued building their false narrative, each adding details that sounded plausible but were entirely fabricated. They watched their screens intently, waiting for some sign that their trap was working.
Nothing happened.
Then, just as they were about to give up, a new message appeared in the meeting chat. Anonymous, untraceable, but unmistakably real:
"You're wrong about everything. But it doesn't matter. The merger will go through now, and you'll all be rich. Take your money and be grateful. Or keep investigating and join Marcus. Your choice."
"Got him," Lars said triumphantly. "He couldn't resist. And that message? That's a confession and a threat. That's evidence."
"Screenshot it," Chen commanded. "Everyone. Before he deletes it."
They all scrambled to capture the message, the first solid proof of their speculation.
"He made a mistake," Isabella said with satisfaction. "Even anonymous messages leave traces. Digital fingerprints."
"And we have something else," Priya added. "We have each other. Four witnesses to the same crime. Four people who can testify to what we saw, what we discovered."
"He counted on us suspecting each other," Chen observed. "On the board tearing itself apart. He didn't count on us working together."
"Marcus would have appreciated the irony," Lars said quietly. "He always said the board's strength was in its diversity. Different backgrounds, different skills, but united in purpose."
"Then let's honor him," Isabella said firmly. "By making sure Richard doesn't profit from his murder."
"Agreed," Chen said. "I'll contact the authorities in Lagos immediately. And the FBI—this involves international corporate crime."
"I'll secure all our digital records," Lars offered. "Create backups that Richard can't touch."
"I'll alert our investors," Priya added. "They need to know what's happened. Full transparency."
"And I'll handle the media," Isabella concluded. "This story needs to be told correctly. Marcus deserves that."
They looked at each other through their screens, four people who had started the meeting as colleagues, been transformed into suspects, and emerged as something else—allies forged in the crucible of crisis.
"Should we end the call?" Priya asked.
"Not yet," Chen advised. "We should stay connected until the authorities are involved. Safety in numbers, even virtual ones."
So they remained on the call, four squares on a screen, witnesses to a murder and its solution. Marcus's feed continued its sideways broadcast, a digital memorial to a man whose death had revealed both the vulnerabilities and the strengths of their interconnected world.
As the hours passed and the authorities in multiple countries began their investigations, as Richard Brennan was arrested trying to board a flight to a non-extradition country, as the truth emerged in all its technological complexity, the four board members stayed connected. They had solved a very modern murder through very modern means—not through physical evidence or eyewitness accounts, but through digital deduction and virtual collaboration.
It was, as Chen would later tell the investigators, like something out of an Agatha Christie novel—if Dame Agatha had lived to see the age of Zoom calls and insulin pumps, of cryptocurrency and corporate espionage conducted through fiber optic cables.
The little green lights beside their cameras continued to blink, faithful witnesses to the entire affair. And somewhere in Lagos, in an office overlooking the Atlantic, Marcus Okonkwo's camera finally went dark, its duty as silent witness complete.
The merger, needless to say, did not go through.
But that, as they say in the business world, is another story entirely.