Sign the Papers Mr. Langford novel Chapter 439

Phoebe frowned. "The same generic PR jargon?"

"The messier it gets, the less we should embellish."

Joey muttered, "But they're tearing us apart online."

Wren looked at him.

"That doesn't mean we rush out half-baked statements without hard evidence."

Joey nodded and went back to work.

Phoebe watched Wren, knowing full well that she was anxious beneath the surface.

The new pilot program for Stellaris was already paused, and The Institutional Review Board was still waiting for the supplementary materials. Throwing the Jude audio leak into the mix only fueled the suspicions that Stellaris was weaponizing Langford's internal politics.

They were wading through mud; the more they thrashed, the filthier they'd get.

At three in the afternoon, Jude received the first recovered raw audio file from his tech team.

The original meeting took place three days ago.

Location: The Langford Family Companion Project's small conference room.

Attendees: Jude, Yolanda, the service team supervisor, and the risk management specialist.

The full, unedited transcript of the spliced section was:

Yolanda: "The anonymous email was already sent to Stellaris, and we don't even know if they've opened the screenshots. Should we send it over to her to confirm?"

Jude: "What do you mean, 'Send the screenshots to her end first, let's see how she handles it'? Every single piece of external communication goes through Thorne Corp's compliance team. If we send it now, it will only cause trouble."

Yolanda: "Won't this cause trouble?"

Jude: "Don't harbor the delusion that 'If things blow up, we won't be the first ones taking the hit'. The moment a child's privacy is breached, every single person involved is going down for it."

Once edited, they had cherry-picked "Send the screenshots to her end first" and "If things blow up, we won't be the first ones taking the hit."

All the outright rejections and warnings in between had been surgically removed.

Staring at the transcript, Jude's fingertips went numb.

The recording was pulled directly from the conference room's automated system.

Very few people had access to that.

He pulled up the access logs.

Downloaded by: Willow Whitaker.

Reason for download: Compiling meeting minute materials.

Timestamp: One hour before last night's banquet.

Jude stared at that single line of text for a very long time, utterly motionless.