“I didn’t touch the system,” I said calmly as the CEO screamed my name across the room. The screens behind him were bleeding red—live logs, real failures, no filters. “Then explain this!” he shouted. I finally stood up. “That is the explanation. You’ve been lying to everyone.” That was the moment I realized: this meeting wasn’t about my job. It was about ending his career.
I knew the company was heading for trouble the day Evan Brooks walked into the office wearing a vest that cost more than my first car and a smile polished by unearned confidence. He didn’t look at the server dashboards lining the wall. He looked at himself reflected in the glass. To Evan, infrastructure wasn’t…