Chapter 16: The Unraveling
The paper shield held for exactly nine days.
Elias had just finished his third Digital Bridge workshop when his phone buzzed. It was his mother, her voice tight with a panic he had never heard before. "Eli, you need to come home. Now."
He found her in the living room, clutching a piece of official-looking stationery. Her hands trembled. "It's from the school board," she whispered, handing him the letter. "They're... they're suspending the Digital Bridge program. Pending review."
Elias's blood went cold as he scanned the formal language. The letter cited "numerous complaints" about a minor operating a for-profit business on school property without proper insurance or oversight. It mentioned "potential data privacy concerns" and "unauthorized access to district systems."
"They're saying you hacked the school," his mother said, her voice breaking. "Eli, what have you gotten involved in?"
This was no longer just an audit. This was a direct attack on his reputation, on everything he had built. Robert Miller wasn't just trying to inconvenience his family; he was trying to destroy Elias's credibility entirely.
The timing was brutal. The NetSolve stock had just begun its predicted climb, but that money was locked away, useless for this fight. The cash from his freelance work was substantial for a teenager but meaningless against the Miller family's resources.
He found Eleanor waiting by his car after school, her face pale. "I heard," she said quietly. "Everyone's talking. They're saying you used the workshops to steal teacher passwords."
He saw the doubt in her eyes, and it cut deeper than any accusation from the school board. "You know that's not true," he said, his voice harder than he intended.
"I know," she said, but the words lacked conviction. "But Eli... these accusations... they sound so specific. How would anyone even come up with this if there wasn't..." She trailed off, unable to finish the thought.
"If there wasn't some truth to it?" he finished for her, the bitterness sharp in his mouth.
The chasm between them yawned wide again, wider than ever before. He was losing her, not to Jason's manipulations this time, but to the carefully constructed web of lies his father was weaving around him.
That evening, he sat in his room, the walls closing in. He had been so careful, so strategic. But he had underestimated his enemy's reach, his willingness to destroy a teenager's future over a schoolyard feud.
His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.
*Check your email.*
His heart pounding, he opened his laptop. There it was—a message from a encrypted service, containing a single file. It was a scanned document, a memo from Robert Miller to a contact on the school board, outlining the exact strategy being used against him. The language matched the school board's letter almost word for word.
At the bottom of the email, a single line: *Sometimes the mouse has to bite back. - L*
Leo. The unlikely ally had just handed him the keys to his own defense.
But as Elias stared at the damning evidence, he realized the true cost of using it. To clear his name, he would have to expose the Millers' corruption publicly. He would have to drag Eleanor into the spotlight, confirming her mother's worst fears about the dangerous world he inhabited. He would have to become the ruthless fighter Robert Miller already believed him to be.
The paper shield Eleanor had given him felt heavy in his backpack. He could almost hear it tearing.
He had the weapon to win this battle. But using it might cost him the war for her heart. The unraveling had begun, and every thread he pulled seemed to tighten the noose around his own future.