Chapter 4

Morning sunlight flooded the massive living room of the Upper East Side penthouse.

Allison placed the two urns gently on the center of the black marble fireplace mantle.

She turned and walked down the hallway, pushing open a hidden door disguised as a bookshelf.

The room inside was dark, illuminated only by the glow of three high-end server racks and a massive curved monitor.

Allison sat in the leather chair. Her fingers hit the mechanical keyboard, flying across the keys with terrifying speed.

She inputted a series of NSA-level decryption codes she had memorized years ago. She didn't rely on brute force. During her time fixing Kason's amateur IT infrastructure, she had quietly embedded a dormant, untraceable backdoor protocol into the root architecture. She triggered it now.

Green lines of code cascaded down the screen. In less than four minutes, she silently bypassed the Lindsay Group's corporate firewall.

She dove straight into the core financial database, pulling up the raw transaction logs from the past twenty-four months.

Her eyes scanned the data blocks. She stopped scrolling.

There it was. Three massive, anomalous wire transfers routed through shell companies in the Cayman Islands.

She ran a trace algorithm. The progress bar flashed, and the final destination account popped onto the screen.

The account belonged to Cody Pierce. Haylee's younger brother.

Allison smirked. She downloaded the raw data, the IP logs, and the bank routing numbers onto a heavily encrypted black USB drive.

She stood up, walked into her walk-in closet, and pulled out a razor-sharp, white Tom Ford power suit.

Thirty minutes later, the elevator doors opened into the opulent lobby of Griffin Castro's Wall Street law firm.

Allison walked straight to the marble reception desk. Her stiletto heels clicked rhythmically against the floor.

"I need to see Griffin Castro," Allison said.

The receptionist offered a polite, plastic smile. "Do you have an appointment, ma'am? Mr. Castro is fully booked for the next three months."

Allison didn't argue. She picked up a heavy Montblanc pen from the desk and a piece of firm stationary.

She wrote down a complex string of hexadecimal code, followed by one sentence.

Your firm's internal firewall has seventeen critical vulnerabilities. I can expose your privileged client communications in sixty seconds.

She slid the paper across the marble. "Give this to Daniel Reeves, his chief of staff. Now."

The receptionist frowned but called a junior clerk to run the note upstairs.

Four minutes later, the private elevator dinged. Daniel Reeves sprinted out, his face pale, sweat beading on his forehead.

He stared at Allison, terrified. "Right this way, ma'am."

The elevator shot up to the top floor. Daniel pushed open the heavy mahogany doors to the senior partner's office.

Griffin Castro sat behind a massive desk. He was a predator in a bespoke suit, his dark eyes sharp and calculating.

He held up the piece of stationary. "Where did you get this vulnerability code?"

Allison pulled out the chair and sat down. She tossed the black USB drive onto his desk. It landed with a heavy clack.

"I want thirty percent of the Lindsay Group," Allison said, ignoring his question. "And I want you to handle the divorce."

Griffin let out a low, dark chuckle. "Kason's legal team will bury you. You won't get a dime."

Allison pointed at the USB drive. "Plug it in."

Griffin raised an eyebrow. He picked up the drive and inserted it into a standalone, air-gapped laptop.

He opened the files. His eyes darted across the screen, absorbing the financial data.

The amusement vanished from his face. He leaned back in his chair, staring at Allison as if seeing her for the first time.

"This is two million dollars of embezzled corporate funds," Griffin said slowly. "Directly linking the CEO's mistress's family to corporate fraud."

"It's enough to tank his stock by morning," Allison said.

Griffin steepled his fingers. "If you can get this kind of data, why do you need me?"

Allison leaned forward, resting her arms on his desk. "Because I need a bulldog to rip his throat out in a courtroom. Legally."

Griffin stared into her cold, dead eyes. A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face.

He stood up, buttoned his suit jacket, and extended his hand.

"Deal."

Allison shook his hand. Her grip was just as firm as his.

"Before I go," Allison said, "print me a standard, immediate-effect divorce settlement template. I have an errand to run."