Chapter 55
Emily
Hy dawn, I was already back at my desk with a mug of tea I barely remembered making, and a pit in my stomach that hadn’t moved in days
The office was quiet most of the staft didn’t start arriving for and her hour–but my fingers were already flying across the keyboard, combing through the login records again.
Something hadn’t sat right with the last anomaly 1 flagged.
The time stamp was wrong–hot off by hours, but by seconds. Tud clean. Ton perfect.
I scrolled back to a document l’d marked two nights ago and cross–referenced the metadata. Then again. Then again. There.
The same file appeared on a terminal across the office two days after I last touched it. With my initials in the edit trail.
Except I never logged into that machine.
My breath caught. Slowly, Turned in my chair and looked across the shared office, through the glass panel where Iris liked to perch in the mornings. She wasn’t here yet. Good.
I logged out of the shared system and walked the long way around, keeping my steps quiet as eased into her chair. Fingers shaking, Inavigated to the backup cache.
The file was there.
Doctored. Edited. With an annotation in my handwriting style–almost perfectly forged.
I took a screenshot. Then another. I copied the version to a flash drive and backed it up twice before shutting everything down again. A slow, hollow laugh built in my throat as I leaned back.
She really thought this would work.
Iris–or someone connected to her had been planting doctored records under my name. And nearly gotten away with it.
I returned to my station, pulled up one of Logan’s pending proposal drafts, and opened a fresh copy.
The trap was simple one document, disguised as a standard financial update, embedded with a traceable digital marker. A hidden macro I’d coded myself would notify me if the file was opened or duplicated.
I added one small, intentional mistake to the math. Something subtle but just suspicious enough that a real analyst would pause.
Then I named the file something innocuous and filed it in my own folder where only a handful of people had access.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. Iris arrived late, breezing in with a tray of coffee and a fresh blouse that looked expensive and gaudy.
By late afternoon, the alert pinged. My trap had been triggered.
I opened the hidden dashboard and stared as the log populated: File copied. Renamed. Reuploaded to Logan’s private inbox. From my account.
My name had been used.
The breath I didn’t realize I was holding escaped in a slow, silent exhale. They weren’t even being careful anymore.
1 copied the log. Took screen captures. Printed everything, old school and hardcopy, just in case.
Then I pulled out the rest of my evidence the earlier altered reports, the timeline I’d built across three weeks, the
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Chapter 55
inconsistencies in edit trails, the scanned notes showing before–and–after versions,
It was all there. Every ti
thread. Every fing
fingerprint.
+25 BONUS
I stacked the papers in order, clipped them neatly, and slipped the into a folder. It was thine. Not just to be believed, but to be heant
I stood, the folder pressed tight to my chest and walked directly to Logan’s office.
I didn’t knock right away.
Logan’s office door stood half–open, the warm light inside spilling cross the floor like a line I wasn’t sure I was ready to cross.
I stood just outside it, one hand on the folder clutched to my chest the other curled into a fist at my side.
Last time I stood in front of him with answers, he looked at me like I was a question he didn’t want to bother solving
“Do you believe them?“_“I didn’t want to,
Those words hadn’t left me.”
They were buried deep–under my spine, under my ribs, under every polite smile I’d given since
Logan wanted proof. And now I had it
1 stepped inside without knocking.
Logan was standing behind his desk, arms crossed, jaw tight. His eyes were on something pinned to the wall–a flowchart of supply lines and Pack alliances–but I knew he heard me.
After a beat, he said, “Do you have something?
hy didn’t want
No greeting. No acknowledgment. Just the distant, low tone of someone preparing for a fight they
I walked to the edge of his desk and set the folder down. “I do,” I said quietly. “And you’re going to want to read all of it.”
That earned me a glance. A flicker of something in his eyes–not interest, not quite the trust I asked for, but a pause. Like he was bracing for disappointment.
He flipped the folder open and began scanning the top page.
“Istarted tracing the inconsistencies the night the rumors broke, I said. “The financial files, the logs, the timestamps. Some of them had my name, my handwriting–but I never touched those terminals. I thought I was imagining it at first. I wasn’t.”
I walked him through the timeline, one page at a time.
“The file you reviewed this morning–the budget revision marked urgent? It wasn’t mine. Lembedded a digital marker. It pinged when it was opened, again when it was duplicated. The sender listed? Me. But the log shows it was accessed from Iris’s terminal. The same one I found altered copies on last week.”
His gaze stopped moving
“Keep reading,” I said.
He did Slowly. Quietly. His posture changed–not much, just enough. The stiffness in his shoulders softened. His arms uncrossed. He picked up a page instead of just glancing at it.
When he reached the security logs, he paced. Just a few steps. But that was enough that I knew he believed me.
“I didn’t want to believe she’d risk it,” he muttered.
“She’s not risking anything it she thinks you’ll believe her.
His eyes snapped to mine. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” I said, throat tightening. “But it’s true
Chapter 55
Silence bloomed between us, sharp and raw. But he didn’t look away.
Why didn’t you come to mne sooner?” he asked. The question was quiet. Real. It caught me off guard.
Thesitated. “Would you have listened?”
His jaw flexed. Something behind his eyes flickered, dark and unreadable.
He didn’t apologize. I hadn’t expected him to. But his voice changed–lower, steadier.
“I’ll handle it.”
I nodded once. He didn’t say anything else. And I didn’t stay.
+25 BONUS
I turned to go, fingers brushing against the frame of the doorways I stepped through. Just as I crossed the threshold, his voice followed me soft, rough–edged,
‘You were right. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t stop walking. But the words followed me all the way back home.
