It was mine.

I’d spent four years designing the algorithm from the ground up under a classified pseudonym. The military called it Project Vanguard.

Daniel was trying to sell my own intellectual property back to the department I commanded, having lifted the foundational blueprints from a server he assumed was safe on our home network.

He thought he’d scrubbed the metadata. He hadn’t.

While he picked Italian marble for his new corner office and bought an Aston Martin with company funds, I authorized federal subpoenas for the offshore accounts he’d used to launder my deployment pay.

I tracked every digital fingerprint. I mapped the forged transfer that cleared Vanessa’s parents’ mortgage. I traced the exact wire that bought Eleanor’s emerald.