24. Colin
COLIN
Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a good weekend.
It’s usually a massive sales weekend across every Copeland restaurant on the planet.
Prix fixe menus, fancy cocktails, candlelight, heart-shaped desserts—half the food is plated in some elaborate geometric swirl I’ll never understand, and the other half is designed for Instagram.
We do triple the business of a normal Saturday, and all I usually have to do is make sure the reservation system doesn’t hiccup under the weight of ten thousand simultaneous table confirmations.
This year, it implodes.
It starts with a slowdown Friday night—just a tiny one, a flicker in the system.
People start complaining that the receipts aren’t printing.
Then someone can’t close out a table. Then a credit card won’t go through.
By eight Eastern, we’re crashing in waves.
Tokyo first. Then Sydney. Then San Francisco. Like dominoes.
I haven’t slept since.
I’ve had maybe three hours total, split up into broken twenty-minute chunks—I think—and all of it on the server room floor with a hoodie rolled under my head.
Every time I close my eyes, someone is calling me again.
London’s lost their gift card system. Seattle says diners are walking out because no one can run cards. Then the real panic hits.
A leak.
Credit card information.
Thousands of them.
We don’t know how many, not yet. But we know they’re hitting the dark web—raw dumps, rapid-fire.
I want to scream. I almost do.
Instead, I drink another Red Bull and try to stop shaking long enough to send a company-wide email. We’re investigating. We’re isolating damage. We’ll fix it.
I’m lying. I don’t know if we can fix it.
And this all could’ve been avoided if we’d implemented StarConnector when I first suggested it.
If Marcus hadn’t said no. If Marcus hadn’t looked me in the eye and told me it was too expensive, too experimental, not reliable enough.
If he hadn’t made me feel like an overeager teenager pitching a science fair project instead of a professional trying to future-proof an empire.
I shove another server rack door open and punch in my override code.
Nothing works fast enough. The room is hot. My head is hot. My body is vibrating. We’re hemorrhaging trust and reputation and money.
Every second the news spreads, our stock drops another half percent.
Someone throws open the server room door. It slams against the wall. I flinch.
“You’re on in forty-five,” says a voice I’ve heard but can’t place. I think her name is Cheryl, but I might be wrong about that.
I blink. “I’m what?”
“The press conference.”
“No,” I say automatically. “Get Dean. Or Tic. Anyone else.”
“You’re the CTO. You called for the press conference, remember?” she says gently.
Did I?
I sit back on my heels, back pressed against the side of the metal rack.
I don’t remember when I called for a press conference or when I sat down.
I realize, dimly, that I’m still wearing the same jeans from yesterday, or maybe the day before, and they smell like coffee and defeat. Maybe that’s just me.
“I haven’t slept in two days,” I mumble.
“You’ve got forty-five minutes,” she says again. “That’s all I can give you. They’re already arriving.”
She leaves. I stay there for a full minute longer, staring up at the blinking lights like they might blink out in Morse code. They seem to say, “You’re not okay.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
But they don’t.
This is my mess to explain. So I get up.
The conference room at headquarters has been staged. Rows of reporters, lights positioned at flattering angles, our branded banner behind the podium. It looks theatrical and neat, like we’re hosting a cooking demo instead of trying to mop blood off the walls of our reputation.
I hate this part. Always have.
I’d rather be under a desk with a laptop, fixing things where no one’s watching. I like quiet, I like code, I like people who don’t expect me to sound like a professional. Colin Copeland is a tech gremlin, not a monkey who dances for the cameras.
But Marcus is “unavailable.” Tic is still auditing the company from the outside, and Dean is lying low while we navigate the minefield of what the board may or may not know about Marcus.
Which leaves me.
My hands are shaking. I clutch the water bottle someone gives me like it might anchor me. I look like shit. I have to—no one looks good on…what’s it been, fifty hours without real sleep? I’m mostly certain my hoodie looks clean-ish. The jeans? Not so much. Do I care? Marginally.
The PR director starts. She’s composed and smooth, reading the prepared statement with the same tone I’ve heard her use for health inspection mishaps and “unfortunate social media missteps.” She says all the right things, just vague enough to sound safe:
“We are investigating a breach of our payment systems and working closely with cybersecurity experts to identify the source. We are prioritizing transparency and customer protection. Our customers and our staff will all be made whole. This is little more than a glitch, which will be resolved soon.”
She looks at me. I nod. My legs move me to the podium.
The lights are hot. I clear my throat and feel every single one of the eyes on me. Sweat beads down my neck.
“Hi,” I start. “I’m Colin Copeland. I’m the CTO of Copeland Restaurants. I know this has been a very difficult weekend for our customers and our teams.”
My voice sounds steadier than I feel. I grip the edge of the podium.
“We experienced a system-wide outage that began Friday evening and led to a significant interruption in our payment processing services. We believe the breach originated in our legacy architecture, which has since been isolated. We are continuing our forensic investigation, and we will provide detailed updates to all affected customers as soon as we can. As she said, everyone will be made whole. It will take time to peel everything apart and find the culprits involved…” I narrow my gaze on the cameras. “But we will find them. All of them.”
I hope Marcus is watching this. I want him to know I’m coming for him.
A reporter in the front row raises a hand. Blonde bob, red nails. That’s all my eyes register. “Why wasn’t this caught earlier?”
I exhale through my nose. “Because the infrastructure that failed us is outdated. And the budget that would have fixed it was denied.” That’s maybe more pointed than I meant, but I see it ripple across the crowd. Murmurs. Pens scratching.
I’m happy to embarrass Marcus publicly. Tic’s investigation is taking too long, and I ran out of patience when I ran out of sleep.
Another reporter asks, “What assurances can you give customers that this won’t happen again?”
None. That’s not how the internet works. Leaks and breaches will always happen. It’s the size that you control for, not whether it’ll happen again.
But I can’t say that out loud. Shareholders would pee themselves. So would customers and staff. As CTO, it’s my job to pretend everything will be fine when I know it will not.
I clear my throat, as though that can clear those thoughts from my head. “We’re rebuilding the system from the ground up. We will be migrating to a new platform—one that should’ve been approved last year.”
Fuck you, Marcus.
“Who denied it?” someone asks.
I hesitate. A thousand ways to answer. I could lie. Say it was a team decision. Say the risk was unclear. But I’m tired. So damn tired.
Lies are exhausting.
“The decision came from our CFO,” I say finally. “I don’t think it was the right one.”
The murmurs grow louder. A camera flashes. Someone else shouts, “Is that why Dean Copeland stepped down as CEO? Was this avoidable?”
I open my mouth to respond, but the lights get too bright. Or maybe the room tilts. It’s hard to say. My skin is tight. My pulse is racing. My thoughts start to stutter. “I?—”
Another question comes in, sharp and aggressive. “How do we know you’re not just trying to shift the blame?”
“I’m not—” My voice cracks.
“You’re responsible for the tech, aren’t you?”
The anger spikes like a flashbang. I don’t mean to. I don’t even hear it before it leaves my mouth.
“Maybe if our CFO had pulled his head out of his ass, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
Or, if I weren’t busy answering asinine questions from bastards like you, I’d have the time to fix this shit.
But instead, I had to come out here to quell your concerns instead of doing my fucking job. ”
Did I say that, or did I think it?
The silence in the room says it’s the former, but I can’t be bothered to care when there’s a rabid grizzly gnawing at my brain. Why does my head hurt so much?
Then someone gasps. The cameras catch it. One flash. Two.
I blink hard, shake my head like it’ll clear the pain, but it doesn’t. The lights get brighter, and my stomach drops, and then?—
Everything tilts. I lose my grip on the podium.
And then everything is on its side, fading to black.
The first thing I register is the cold.
Someone presses something cold to my forehead. There’s noise—blurred voices, a hand on my chest, people moving. The lights are too much. I’m on my back. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to catch my breath, but everything hurts.
“Colin?” a voice says.
I open my eyes, barely. Possibly Cheryl. Her face is above me, pale but focused.
“You’re okay,” she says, voice soft. “You fainted. EMTs are on the way.”
I try to speak. Fail.
She smiles, ever the professional. “We’ve got it from here. Rest.”
Possibly Cheryl deserves a raise.
I, however, do not.
I fainted? What the fuck?
Question is, do I care? I’m too numb to care, save for the clawing in my brain. So, I let myself drift.
The damage is done. Nothing else to do but ride the wave.