So months before that locked-kitchen evening, working with a security firm that answered to me and no one else, I had built what the industry calls a duress system into the biometric authorizations that controlled the real assets.

It was simple, and it was beautiful.

My thumbprint and my retina could authorize a transfer — but the system also watched my vital signs while I did it.

And I had set a rule: if my biometrics were ever used to authorize a movement of funds while my heart rate was elevated past a certain threshold — the heart rate of a woman under duress, a woman being forced — the system would not complete the transfer.

It would do the opposite.