I feel for you and this puts you in a difficult spot and not only effects your long term career but also you personal life as you need to live with your actions as well. And it sounds as if it is already causing you some concern.
So here is my story…
Very early on in my career i was working for a company that was in a 2 way company relationship developing a product for a customer. Things became complicated and i never did understand what happened but the company we had partnered with was pulling out of the project. At our location we had many items that belonged to them, tooling, prototypes and things. They where onsite packing everything and checking the inventory list when one of our project managers came to me and asked if i had any of the cad files and drawings on how something worked. I said yes and then he informed me to make an immediate back up of all the data fully knowing that all the data belonged to them.
I looked at him and challenged him and his response was he was just the messenger and the request came from our boss. I sat for a good hour thinking about the ask not to determine what was right or wrong (i already new that it was dishonest) but what the ramifications would be of my actions. I walked to the person doing the inventory and handed her the only copy of the data too which she was appreciative and even stated that they didn’t have that on their list.
Our project manager came back to see if i had backed up the data and i informed him what i had done, his response was “I respect what you did and it is what i should have said to our boss as well” 20 minutes later i was called into my bosses office (this was on a Wednesday) I was berated up and down with yelling and derogatory remarks, i was told that i was a child and i didn’t understand how the business world worked. he then stated that he knew i had a few days off planed (Thursday and Friday) and told me that he wanted to see me Monday morning and to tell him if i was “on board with the program or not”
He did not know that my trip was to fly out for a face to face interview for a company that had reached out to me. which i received a job offer and then in turn i provided him my resignation at our Monday meeting.
Now to be honest when returning the data and being told that i needed to make a decision on the Monday i fully decided that even if i didn’t take the job i was done and would be leaving. ( I was also young with no family to support) The action of evening asking me to do that left me disgusted, keeping in mind that i did offer 3-4 weeks notice to finish off the customers project ( i was truly the only one there capable of doing the work) instead i was escorted off the property with my boss lecturing me. (the customers reaction to this is another interesting story)