The Salaryman's Soul-Sucking Contract

Chapter 13: Digital Footprints and Ghost Accounts

Chapter 13: Digital Footprints and Ghost Accounts

The heavy oak door of Daffa’s cramped studio apartment clicked shut behind him, sealing out the echoes of the Puncak retreat and the polished, lethal world of the Bautistas. The air inside smelled faintly of instant noodles and old paper—a stark, grounding contrast to the expensive jasmine perfume and chilled mountain air he had left behind.

He dropped his canvas bags by the narrow entryway, ignored the blinking red light of his landline, and walked straight to his battered desk. The secondhand laptop hummed to life with a familiar, sluggish whir, its screen casting a pale, sterile glow across his exhausted face.

If Armand Bautista and Clarisse thought they could sweep him under the corporate rug, they severely underestimated the survival instincts of a man who had spent three years auditing ghosts.

"Let's see what’s really hiding in the basement," Daffa muttered to himself, his fingers flying across the keyboard with a practiced, manic speed.

He didn't bother trying to hack the primary Bautista server directly; that firewall was a digital fortress guarded by a small army of cyber-security consultants. Instead, he targeted the secondary accounting nodes—the messy, overlooked sub-ledgers where regional subsidiaries dumped their messy invoices before corporate sterilization.

For two hours, he waded through a digital swamp of shell companies, inflated logistics fees, and offshore routing codes. The North Kalimantan portfolio wasn't just leaking money; it was a massive, bleeding financial sieve designed to drain corporate assets directly into private pockets. And right at the center of the web of transactions was a single, dormant account that hadn't seen active traffic in over five years.

An account registered under the code name: Project Kraken.

Daffa’s breath hitched in his throat. It was the exact project name he had seen in the archives the night the lights went out—the same project Clarisse had claimed was just a routine maritime log review.

He pulled up the historical transaction logs, cross-referencing the routing numbers with old public registry data he had saved from his university days. The names attached to the ghost account dissolved before his eyes like digital smoke, replaced by a terrifyingly familiar corporate entity: Bautista Holding Trust.

"It wasn't Julian," Daffa whispered, the cold truth settling heavily in his stomach. "Julian was just a distraction. The North Kalimantan discrepancy wasn't a leak... it was an ongoing embezzlement scheme run by the Chairman himself."

Clarisse wasn't just protecting her father’s legacy; she was neck-deep in the family’s dirty laundry. The Phase 2: The Scapegoat document wasn't a sudden reaction to an audit—it was a pre-emptive strike designed to protect the Bautista bloodline the moment someone finally asked the right questions about where the regional funds were actually going.

His phone buzzed violently against the wooden desk, shattering the silence of the room.

Daffa jumped, his eyes darting to the screen. The caller ID flashed a private number. He let it ring twice, his heart hammering against his ribs, before swiping the screen to accept.

"If this is Julian, you can tell your boss to mail his threats," Daffa snapped into the receiver, his voice sharp and steady.

"It’s not Julian, Mr. Wicaksana," a smooth, unfamiliar voice replied on the other end. It sounded corporate, clinical, and unnervingly calm. "My name is Marcus Vance. I represent an independent auditing firm retained by a group of minority shareholders in the Bautista Group."

Daffa leaned back in his squeaky desk chair, narrowing his eyes at the glowing monitor. "Minority shareholders don't usually hire independent auditors unless they smell blood in the water. What do you want, Marcus?"

"We want the North Kalimantan data stream, Daffa," Marcus said, skipping the pleasantries entirely. "We know you downloaded a mirrored copy of the sub-ledger before you were dismissed from the Puncak retreat this morning. We also know that Chairman Bautista has already flagged your employee ID for internal fraud investigation."

Daffa let out a dry, humorless laugh. "Of course he has. Old habits die hard."

"Listen to me carefully," Marcus continued, his tone dropping into a serious, conspiratorial register. "If you walk into the Bautista headquarters tomorrow morning with that flash drive, you won't make it past the security turnstiles before federal marshals arrest you for corporate espionage. They are setting you up for a fall that will put you away for a decade."

"And if I give the data to you?" Daffa asked, his analytical mind instantly calculating the risks.

"You walk away with a clean slate, a substantial re-location f*e, and the satisfaction of watching the Bautista empire crumble from the outside," Marcus offered smoothly. "We meet in one hour at the rooftop cafe of the Grand Sahid Hotel. Bring the drive. Don't bring your phone."

The line went dead with a sharp click before Daffa could ask another question.

He stared at the dead screen of his phone for a long moment, his thumb tracing the smooth plastic edge. It was a textbook trap. Handing over corporate data to an unverified third party was just as illegal as whatever the Bautistas were pinning on him. He would be jumping out of the Bautista frying pan straight into an unknown legal fire.

Yet, staying in Jakarta without leverage was a guaranteed death sentence in the financial sector.

Daffa stood up, pulled his jacket off the back of the chair, and reached for the small USB drive plugged into the side of his laptop. He transferred the primary ledger files into a hidden partition, encrypted the archive with a password only he knew, and dropped the physical drive into his front pocket.

He glanced around his tiny studio apartment one last time. The microwave hummed softly; the stack of unpaid utility bills sat neatly by the door. It was a modest, miserable little life, but it was his. And the Bautistas had just spent the last week systematically trying to destroy it.

"Time for a hostile takeover," Daffa muttered, killing the power to his laptop and heading out into the humid Jakarta night.

The Grand Sahid Hotel was a monument to old-money Jakarta, its marble lobby gleaming under the harsh light of crystal chandeliers. Daffa kept his head down, bypassing the main elevators and taking the service stairs up to the rooftop terrace. The cool night air hit him immediately, carrying the distant, rumbling roar of city traffic below.

The rooftop cafe was nearly empty, save for a single figure sitting at a corner table overlooking the glittering expanse of the southern skyline.

As Daffa approached, the man stood up. He was impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, his silver-rimmed glasses catching the neon glare of the city signs. But it wasn't Marcus Vance.

It was a face Daffa recognized instantly from the annual shareholder reports—a man who sat on the very board that had watched him squirm at the Puncak breakfast table.

"Director Santoso?" Daffa stopped a few feet away, his hand instinctively tightening on the flash drive in his pocket. "I thought you represented the minority shareholders."

Santoso offered a tight, weary smile, gesturing for Daffa to take a seat across from him. "Minority shareholders are just a polite way of saying people who are tired of losing their investments to Armand Bautista's criminal empire, Mr. Wicaksana. Please, sit."

Daffa didn't move. "Cut the corporate poetry, Director. You want the data, or you want to lecture me about loyalty?"

Santoso sighed, sliding into his chair and folding his hands neatly on the table. "Loyalty is a luxury for people who don't have offshore bank accounts draining their portfolios, Daffa. I didn't invite you here to lecture you. I invited you here because you and I want the exact same thing."

"And what’s that?"

"The complete and total dismantling of the Bautista dynasty," Santoso said softly, his eyes gleaming with a sudden, cold ambition. "And I happen to know you're the only man in Jakarta who holds the key to the vault."