Chapter 5

Diana Ware POV:

My father, a brilliant but unrecognized software engineer, had passed away six years ago, just before I met Jordan. He was a quiet, meticulous man who believed in the elegant purity of code. His last gift to me was his old, beat-up laptop and a single piece of advice: "Keep track of your life, Diana. Your time, your money, your work. It' s your story. Don' t let anyone else write it for you."

To honor his memory, I had done just that. I' d used the unique accounting app he' d created, not just for budgeting, but as a digital journal. Every freelance project, every hour worked at the diner, every dollar earned and every penny spent-it was all logged in his app. I had found the ritual comforting, a way to feel connected to him, documenting the struggle I believed we would one day look back on and laugh about.

The irony was a bitter pill. The habit I' d formed out of love and remembrance was now my only weapon. It was the one piece of my story they couldn' t rewrite.

My fingers, numb with cold and shock, fumbled with the latches on the storage box. I pushed aside the stacks of paper and pulled out the old laptop. It was heavy and obsolete by today' s standards, but it felt like a holy relic in my hands.

I found a 24-hour laundromat, the hum of the dryers a comforting white noise. Huddled in a hard plastic chair in the corner, I powered on the machine. The screen flickered to life, and I clicked on the familiar, simple icon on the desktop: a small compass. The app was called "VeriTrack."

I had never understood the technical side of it, but my father had tried to explain it to me once, his face alight with excitement. "It' s built on a blockchain, kiddo," he' d said. "Think of it like a digital stone tablet. Every time you make an entry, it gets carved into the stone, given a unique time-stamp, and a copy of that carving is sent to a hundred different places at once. No one-not you, not me, not the best hacker in the world-can go back and change what' s written. It' s immutable."

Immutable. The word echoed in the desolate chambers of my heart.

I opened the app. And there it was. Five years of my life, displayed in an incorruptible, unalterable ledger.

1,825 days.

Over 9,000 hours of freelance design work, time-stamped to the minute.

Over 6,000 hours of waitressing shifts.

Every dollar deposited from three separate jobs.

Every cent transferred to pay off Jordan' s credit card.

Every grocery bill, every utility payment, every cheap pair of shoes I bought for Leo.

It was all there. A digital monument to my labor. A story told in data, a story they couldn't dismiss as "role-playing." They could freeze my accounts, they could tear up a contract, they could take my son. But they couldn't erase the time. They couldn' t un-work the hours. They couldn' t deny the raw, quantifiable data of my contribution.

A fire I thought had been extinguished began to smolder back to life.

With trembling hands, I plugged a small USB drive into the laptop. I exported every last byte of data-the logs, the time-stamps, the transaction records-and encrypted the file.

Then, I scrolled through the ancient contact list on my phone. My thumb hovered over a name I hadn' t called in years. Eric Gamble.

Eric was my father' s protégé, a brilliant, scrappy kid my dad had mentored. He had been devastated by my father's death. I remembered him at the funeral, barely twenty-five, promising me that if I ever needed anything, anything at all, he would be there. He was a lawyer now, running his own small firm. A shark, my father had called him, but one who fought for the little guy.

I took a deep, shuddering breath and pressed the call button. It rang three times before a groggy voice answered.

"Gamble."

"Eric?" My voice was a broken whisper. "It' s... it' s Diana. Diana Ware. Robert Ware' s daughter."

There was a pause on the other end, then the fogginess in his voice vanished, replaced by sharp recognition. "Diana. My God. It' s been years. Is everything okay? You sound..."

"No," I choked out, a sob finally escaping. "No, nothing is okay. I' m in... I' m in a lot of trouble, Eric. I need a lawyer. I need the best lawyer."

I heard the sound of movement on the other end, the rustle of sheets.

"You called the right number," he said, his voice now wide awake and infused with a steely confidence that sent a flicker of hope through me. "Where are you? Come to my office. Now."

An hour later, I was sitting in a functional, cluttered office that smelled of coffee and legal pads. Eric Gamble was no longer the lanky kid I remembered. He was a man, with sharp, intelligent eyes and an aggressive energy that seemed to vibrate in the small space.

I didn' t cry. I didn' t waste time on the emotional devastation. I simply plugged the USB drive into his computer.

"My father called it VeriTrack," I said, my voice flat and cold. "He said it was an honest ledger."

I clicked open the file. Five years of my life cascaded onto the screen in a waterfall of spreadsheets, logs, and data points.

Eric leaned forward, his eyes scanning the information. His initially relaxed posture tensed. His fingers drummed on the desk, faster and faster. A slow, predatory smile began to spread across his face. It was the look of a shark that had just smelled blood in the water.

He finally leaned back, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying, exhilarating light. He looked at me, really looked at me, and saw not a victim, but a weapon.

"Diana," he said, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "They took everything from you based on their story. Now, we use your story to take everything from them." He steepled his fingers. "So, you tell me. What do you want?"

I thought of Jordan' s condescending chuckle. Isabell' s pitying sneer. Leo' s cold, rejecting eyes. I thought of the fifty-thousand-dollar severance check and the five-hundred-dollar robot. I thought of the words, "You are nothing."

All the pain, all the humiliation, all the white-hot rage, coalesced into a single, diamond-hard point of purpose.

I met his gaze, my own eyes cold and hard as stone.

"I want them ruined," I said, each word dropping like a shard of ice. "I want them to know what it feels like to have nothing."