Chapter 214
Chapter 214:
“Thank you, Dr. Clements,” she said, reestablishing the professional distance with his title.
A flash of disappointment crossed Brogan’s face before he masked it with a polite nod.
Before either of them could speak, the office door slammed open.
BANG.
𝗡𝘦w ch𝗮р𝗍е𝗋ѕ 𝘦𝗏е𝘳𝘆 𝘸𝗲𝖾𝗸 𝗈ո
The wood struck the wall stopper hard, shattering the quiet entirely. June and Brogan both spun toward the door.
Crawford filled the frame. His massive presence blocked the hallway light, and the energy radiating from him was unmistakably territorial, his eyes locked on Brogan with the focused intensity of a predator.
He crossed to the desk in measured strides and dropped a thick black leather folder onto the glass surface with a sharp crack. His gaze moved from Brogan to June, a cold, cutting smirk forming at the corner of his mouth.
“My apologies for interrupting,” Crawford said, his voice saturated with quiet sarcasm. “But the two of you need to stop playing doctor and look at this. We have a serious problem p>
The folder striking the glass desk sent a shockwave through the room.
The air turned thick.
Brogan rose to his feet, jaw set, clearly ready to address Crawford’s aggressive entrance. But June saw the absolute seriousness in Crawford’s eyes and reached past the tension, flipping the folder open.
The first page was a classified internal data report from a top-tier Wall Street investment bank, stamped with a bold red CONFIDENTIAL across the header.
June’s eyes moved across the numbers. Her pupils dilated. The lingering warmth of Brogan’s touch evaporated instantly, replaced by a deep, systemic chill that had nothing to do with the room.
All the color left her face.
A jagged red line graph dominated the page, tracking terminal sales volume of Apex Bio’s second-generation cancer inhibitor across the North American market. Over the past fourteen days, the line had not simply dipped. It had collapsed — a near-vertical freefall of forty percent.
The paper rattled in her grip.
“This is impossible,” June whispered, her voice tight. “Our clinical efficacy data is the best in the world. No competitor on the market can touch our formula p>
Brogan moved around the desk and looked over her shoulder. His body went rigid. The color left his face as well.
Crawford turned a chair backward, straddled it, and rested his forearms on the backrest, watching them both.
“This is not a normal market fluctuation,” he said, his voice low and flat. “This isn’t a competitor undercutting your price. This is a targeted, systematic destruction of your market share p>
June forced her lungs to expand. Her mind accelerated through every possible variable.
“Is it a supply chain bottleneck? Did the New Jersey plant halt production? Did our quality control data leak to a short-seller p>
Crawford shook his head slowly. “My intelligence network is running an emergency audit of your entire supply chain. Preliminary reports show no manufacturing halts or bottlenecks.” He paused. “But the major hospital procurement orders haven’t dropped a single percentage point. That discrepancy didn’t make sense, so I had my team look elsewhere p>