Julian looked Blake straight in the eye and waited until the room went completely quiet. Then he calmly pulled out his phone, opened a folder, and connected it to the TV Blake had been proudly showing off all afternoon. On the screen appeared months of emails, invoices, and emergency messages from Blake himself, each one begging Julian to recover deleted investor files, secure hacked accounts, or rescue presentations minutes before meetings. Without raising his voice, Julian said, “It’s strange hearing you mock the person who’s kept your career alive.”
Blake laughed nervously and claimed everyone needs tech support sometimes. Julian simply opened one final document—a consulting agreement Blake had signed six months earlier after a ransomware attack nearly destroyed his firm. It showed that Julian had rebuilt the company’s entire network over one weekend, refused payment, and even signed a confidentiality agreement to protect Blake from the embarrassment. “The only reason your investors never found out,” Julian said quietly, “is because I fixed what you told everyone never happened.”
Nobody touched their drinks after that. Blake’s own business partners admitted they had never known how close the company had come to collapsing, and several were furious they had been kept in the dark. Blake apologized in front of everyone, but for the first time Julian didn’t brush it off with a laugh. He simply unplugged the Wi-Fi equipment he had installed that morning, handed Blake the admin password, and said, “From now on, hire a professional.” The silence that followed was louder than any argument could have been.
