The Billionaire Came to Inspect His Company and Froze When He Saw an Intern Fighting With a Prosthetic Leg His Own System Had Failed to Replace

The autumn rain in Seattle turned into a steady, freezing downpour by November.

Inside the R&D labs on the subterranean level of the headquarters, Annie was knee-deep in a project that had consumed her every waking hour for the past fortnight: redesigning the legacy upgrade protocol to ensure that no orphaned serial numbers or donated devices could ever be used by regional managers to deny warranty support again.

The lab doors slid open with a soft hiss.

Daniel Price walked in, holding a brown manila envelope that looked distinctly different from the neat corporate folders he usually carried. His face was tight, his professional veneer slightly ruffled.

“Annie,” Daniel said, stopping beside her workbench.

“If this is another regional audit report from the European division, put it in the pile,” Annie said without looking up from her soldering iron, fusing a tiny microchip onto a circuit board.

“It’s not an audit report,” Daniel said quietly, laying the manila envelope on the stainless-steel table. “It came through the corporate whistleblower hotline about twenty minutes ago. Marked personal and confidential, addressed directly to Jonathan and yourself.”

Annie paused her soldering iron. She set it down in its rack, wiped her hands on a shop towel, and picked up the envelope.

Inside was a single printed photograph and a typewritten memo.

The photograph showed a dilapidated industrial warehouse located on the industrial outskirts of Tacoma—a place far away from the gleaming glass towers of downtown Seattle. Piled high against the side of the loading dock were hundreds of cardboard crates stamped with the familiar blue-and-white logo of Bennett Medical Technologies.

Annie pulled out the typewritten memo and read it aloud:

“While your executive team is busy auditing regional branch offices for four-dollar procurement discrepancies, your former regional director Richard Vance didn't just destroy paperwork. He warehoused five thousand recalled B-12 and C-1 prosthetic units intended for destruction back in 2018, falsified the inventory disposal certificates, and sold them on the secondary black market to unverified overseas brokers. Check the Tacoma docks before the containers ship out on midnight tide.”

Annie’s breath hitched. She looked up at Daniel, her eyes wide with shock. “If those recalled units hit the black market... unverified calibration, outdated software, faulty locking pins—people could get seriously hurt. Amputees who think they’re getting a discounted device are walking around on ticking time bombs.”

“Jonathan is already in his office,” Daniel said grimly. “He’s mobilizing corporate security and federal marshals. But he wants you down at the Tacoma docks with him. You know the hardware better than anyone else on the payroll.”