Part 2: The Silent Audit
The warm restaurant noise seemed to vanish as the digital threat stared back at me from the dark glass.
Daniel noticed my sudden shift, his smile fading into a line of quiet concern. "Clara? Is everything okay?"
"It's just work, Daniel," I lied, my thumb already typing a hidden sequence to my senior compliance officer.
"You have the face again," Mia said, looking up from her plate with frosting on her nose. "The face like the bad day isn't over."
"Mia, let the lady eat," Daniel murmured, though his eyes never left my hands, which were tightly gripping my small, expensive clutch.
I stood up slowly, the burgundy fabric of my gown rustling as I adjusted my pinned hair.
"I have to take a call," I said, walking rapidly toward the quiet hallway near the private dining suites.
I called Sophie, my executive assistant, on our encrypted field line.
"Sophie, lock down the primary server at the firm," I ordered, my voice dropping to a dangerous, clinical whisper.
"I can't, Ms. Whitmore," Sophie's voice cracked through the receiver, filled with a sudden, suffocating panic.
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"Your ex-husband, Grant, just uploaded a secondary proxy ledger using a forged power of attorney from the Zurich office."
"He's inside the master registry right now," she cried. "He's liquidating the northern baseline assets."
