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Katherine did not cry when she walked into their immaculate suburban home. The silence of the empty house, which usually felt lonely on the nights Reginald claimed to be working late, now felt like a tactical advantage. / Chapter 6 / 31

Chapter 6 - The Midnight HackHargrove temporarily suspended Katherine's access at 5:00 PM, citing a "conflict of interest" regarding her husband. She was forced to leave the building.

But Hargrove underestimated the woman who preferred the building before people arrived.

At 11:30 PM, Katherine sat in the passenger seat of Marcus Bell’s car, parked in the dark alley behind the bank.

"He revoked your biometric access," Marcus said, tapping furiously on his laptop. "But he forgot that as Senior Lead, you have a ghost-protocol login for emergency audits. I just need to patch you into the mainframe."

"Do it," Katherine said.

Marcus bypassed the firewall, granting Katherine remote access to the bank's central server. She had a narrow fifteen-minute window before Hargrove’s automated security sweep would detect them.

"Hargrove is trying to wipe the Bracken Ridge ledgers right now," Katherine said, watching the files being systematically deleted on her screen. "He's destroying the evidence to save himself and Reginald."

"Can you stop it?" Marcus asked, sweating.

"I don't need to stop it," Katherine smirked, her fingers flying across the keyboard. "I'm rerouting it."

Instead of letting the files delete, Katherine copied the entire encrypted database of Whitfield Development, Hargrove Consulting, and Chloe Vance’s Cayman accounts. Then, she set up a dead-man’s switch.

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