Who won the bid?

Along the way, Nick kept silent. Though Mira wanted to tell him that she didn't know how their proposal was leaked, looking at the serious face and the cold demeanor Mira shuddered in fear and couldn't make a sound.

As soon as they reached the office building, Nick got out of the car and walked towards his elevator. Mira ran behind him to catch up with his long strides.

After entering the elevator, Mira noticed that they were not going to the CEO's floor but they were going to the 19th floor. Mira was utterly shocked and didn't understand what was happening. As soon as the elevator door opened on the floor, Nick went straight to the department responsible for the tenders closely followed by Mira.

He went into the conference room for the department and as a tacit understanding all the personnel from the department entered the room one after another wondering what the sudden meeting agenda could be. Few had speculations that it could be about that day's bidding. News travels fast in corporates, so everyone is aware that the CEO personally attended today's bidding and their company proposal was compromised which means someone on the inside sold their information to their competitors.

After everyone was inside the room, Mira went and closed the conference room door and walked back to Nick's side and stood their trembling with fear written all over her face. One glance at her and you could tell that, she hit the wrong button with CEO today. While Nick sitting at the center, the general manager of the department on his right and the chief designer sat on his left. Once everyone was seated, Nick cast a glance at Mira when the latter realized that she was still standing. She immediately pulled a chair to the left of Nick and sat down.

"I'm sure by now most of you would have guessed the reason behind this meeting. But let me tell you again. Our proposal is not selected for the bidding today and the proposal submitted by UpscaleLife is exactly what we have submitted. Can anyone shed some light on why we have such a coincidence?"

To that the manager started sweating profusely and uttered, " Mr.Asher, our team has done the proposals and submitted to the secretary office. We are not even aware of the final version of the approved proposal. This matter is very significant and can't be overlooked. We need to do a thorough investigation on what has happened"

Nick gave a side smirk on his words and thought he sure is a manager who knows to protect his team silently shifting the blame to the secretary department.

"Hmm..indeed." and then he looked at the chief designer asking him if he has any thoughts.

The chief designer hurriedly said, "Sir, we submitted the proposal to Ms.Mira and as always she was the one who sent the proposal to the bidding company. Only a handful of people including me and the manager had the access to the complete proposal. All the team members work independently within their own specialized areas and no one has the full knowledge on it."

"Good. Send me the list of names of all the individuals who worked on this proposal and another list with names of people who had access to the complete proposal. I want it in my office in next 20mins." 

With that Nick got up from his chair, gave a look at Mira and walked out of the conference room.

Understanding Nick's signal, Mira waited in the conference room until she got the lists and went back to the President's office. She knocked on the door and entered the office after Nick permitted her and handed the lists to him and waited.

Nick scanned through the lists and asked her, "You are the one who sent the final proposal to the bidding company and we lost the bid. Do you want to say anything?" and looked at her intently.

The usually coward Mira couldn't take it when Nick was accusing her of treachery. She immediately looked at Nick with eyes full of tears ready to slip any moment and told him," Sir, I didn't do anything to harm the company. My desk is right in front of you and I follow you almost the entire day only going home to sleep." With that she walked to her desk and brought her laptop and handed it to Nick. 

"Please take a look at my laptop. If you want you can send it to the security team and have them recover the deleted files and emails also."

She felt very aggrieved when speaking and finally said, "If you can't trust me, I better quit my work here than being looked at like a thief." She immediately left the office without looking back and waiting for Nick to respond or reprimand her as she couldn't control her tears anymore. 

Nick fell into a long silence as he thought of Mira's aggrieved look. He had an urge to run after her and comfort her. But he need to maintain his composure so the real culprit would relax and come out. Thinking of how everyone tried to shift the blame to Mira, he thought there was more than one person in the department who colluded with the other party. In fact, he already had a vague idea on who those are. He is just waiting for his assistant to come back with his investigation report and produce the evidence.

Suddenly there was a knock on his door, and the manager walked inside with Nick's consent. "Sir, as you have asked earlier I've prepared the list of all the personnel who had a peek on the bid proposal including myself." the manager bowed slightly to Nick and said in a respectful tone. Nick took the list in his hands and flicked his hand signalling the manager to leave his office. By the time, he was out the manager was drenched in his sweat due to the pressure inside the room. The manager was pitying Mira in his mind that she is now going to face their CEO's wrath. Sighing he took few minutes in silence to regain his composeure. 

While Nick skimmed through the list, he felt very irritated that a mole occured in his team and closed his eyes to calm himself. Suddenly, Ryan pushed open the door to Nick's office and rushed in. "Mr.Asher, the bid went as expected. We secured the second bid that you personally prepared. All the other bidders are in a frenzy knowing that we secured the final bid. It is going to be a super hot topic in the internet."

Nick raised an eyebrow and looked at his assistant like he was giving him a message. Looking at Nick's serious expression, Ryan finally realised that he had become too excited with his latest feat and started blabbing. He quickly got back to his business mode and continued with a serious expression,"We had more than one mole on the team. Here is the evidence." Ryan handed a bunch of documents to Nick. Nick flipped through those documents casually as if the content in them is already known to him. As he was going through those documents, one could see that the temperature in the room started to decrease giving a chilling feeling to anyone around him. Ryan looked at Nick's face and instantly understood that those who wronged him today are going to pay very dearly. He braced himself for Nick's next order.

"Call for a meeting with these guys. I want all of them to be here"

"Yes, sir. I'll have them all come to your office in few minutes." As Ryan approached the door, he heard Nick's voice, "Call Mira also". Ryan nodded and moved quickly closing the door behind him.

In about 10minutes, Ethan, the manager who shared the list to Nick and an employee in his department were summoned to Nick's office. Mira also rushed to the room as she was anxious on what Nick would do. She was still thinking how she is going to be humiliated for no mistake of hers. She had been cursing Nick for all this while as he didn't really give her a chance to defend herself. As soon as she entered the room, everyone looked at her with disgust and they seemed to be looking at a criminal. They started muttering unpleasant things "I would have resigned and got lost for doing such a damage to the company". Though she felt very unhappy about their attitude, she still maintained her calm and searched the room to see if Nick was there and found his seat empty. Thinking about what is going to happen next, she heard the sound of the door. She saw that Ryan entered the room followed by Nick bring the chattering in the room to a standstill. People in the room were so terrified by him that they almost forgot to breath. 

Slowly, Nick went forward and assumed his seat, while Ryan closed the room behind and stood in his place. "There is a reason I called you in today. From the details that I have received, I see that you guys worked the most on this bid. Mr.Norman do you have anything to say."

"Sir, usually it is not needed for me to be personally involved in the projects like this. But considering this a high prestige and very important bid, I wanted to make sure we get the bid today and put in the extra hours."

After his explanation, Nick turned to look at his other employee who is standing in the room and raised an eyebrow asking if he wanted to explain himself. To this the employee responded, "Sir, there is nothing much for me to explain in this matter. I wanted to do a good market research and prepare the bid. Even though I worked in the industry before, this is the first time I'm handling a project of this scale. So I wanted to ensure that we don't have any mishaps."