Chapter 5 - The Trap is SetAt 7:00 AM the following morning, I walked into the glass-walled headquarters of Vance Analytical, the cybersecurity and forensic data firm I had co-founded six years ago before selling my shares.
While Graham had drained my personal liquid accounts, he didn't realize that my secondary holding company—the one that held my private server nodes and proprietary cryptographic keys—was locked behind a triple-authentication security protocol linked directly to my retinal scan.
My former business partner, David Chen, met me in the private lab.
"Clara," David said, his face pale as he looked at the police reports displayed on his monitor. "This guy is a monster. He’s been pinging your corporate server from an IP address located in a private suite at the Grand Regency Hotel downtown."
"He’s still in the city?" I asked, leaning over the console.
"He hasn't left," David confirmed, tracking the digital breadcrumbs. "He couldn't leave yet because the final wire transfer from Apex Horizon Holdings requires a live biometric verification from you—or a high-resolution spoof that his team is currently trying to render using your public video recordings."
My blood ran cold. Graham hadn't just stolen my paperwork; his team was actively generating a deepfake of my identity to authorize the final offshore wire transfer of $2 million.
"Can we intercept the transfer?" I asked.
"We can do better," David smiled darkly, typing rapidly across his mechanical keyboard. "We can redirect the ping back to the FBI’s Financial Crimes Division while simultaneously executing a remote lock on every account associated with Apex Horizon Holdings."
"No," I stopped him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "If we involve the FBI now, the accounts get frozen, the litigation takes five years, and I lose Unit 14C to foreclosure in three days. I need Graham to push the button."
"If he pushes the button, the money goes to Panama!" David argued.
"Not if we change the destination routing code in the middleware," I said, my fingers flying over the secondary terminal. "We swap Apex Horizon’s destination account with the court-ordered escrow account Evelyn set up this morning. When Graham authorizes the transfer thinking he’s stealing the final $2 million... he will actually be transferring his entire stolen offshore fund directly into a court-supervised trust."
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David stared at me, a slow, appreciative grin spreading across his face. "You're going to make him rob himself."
"He wanted my life," I said coldly. "I'm going to give him his own bill."
