"At midnight on New Year’s Eve, dad called me the first useless person to be cut from the family while mom and my sister laughed, but when I said they had just made my decision easy, every smile vanished...

The Duluth distribution center sat on a cliff overlooking the frozen, iron-grey expanse of Lake Superior.

By the time our helicopter touched down on the snow-covered helipad at 2:00 AM, the fire in the server vault had been contained by automated halon suppression systems, but smoke still drifted into the freezing night air.

Marcus met us at the landing pad, wearing a heavy tactical parka, his face grim.

"We caught the insider," Marcus reported over the roar of the helicopter blades as he escorted us toward the security facility. "A junior systems engineer named Peters. He was paid two hundred thousand dollars in cryptocurrency to plug an encrypted flash drive directly into the primary server rack at midnight."

"Where is he?" Arthur demanded.

"In the holding room," Marcus said. "He sang like a canary the moment my team showed him the federal conspiracy charges he was facing. He confirmed it was Julian Sterling who provided the flash drive."

"Where is Julian now?" I asked, pulling my collar up against the biting lake wind.

Marcus offered a dark, cold smile. "He thinks he's safe. He's sitting in a private suite at the Shoreline Hotel three miles from here, waiting for confirmation that our servers were completely wiped so he can collect his remaining payout from Apex Capital."

Twenty minutes later, three black SUVs pulled up outside the entrance of the Shoreline Hotel.

The lobby was quiet and empty at three in the morning. We took the private elevator directly to the penthouse floor. Marcus didn't bother picking the lock of Suite 501. He used a master security key card provided by the hotel's panicked manager, and the heavy door swung open silently.

Inside, the suite was warm, lit only by the glow of a laptop screen and the roaring gas fireplace.

Julian Sterling sat at a glass desk, wearing an expensive silk robe, a glass of scotch in his hand, a smug smile on his face as he watched a loading bar on his laptop screen.

"I told you it would work, Victoria," Julian was saying into a hands-free headset. "The Duluth hub is completely offline. Vance-Harrell won't recover from this before the European audit on Friday—"

"I wouldn't be so sure about that, Julian," I said smoothly, stepping into the suite.

Julian froze.

The scotch glass slipped from his fingers, crashing onto the hardwood floor and shattering into a hundred glittering shards. He spun around in his chair, his face turning the color of chalk as he saw me standing there, flanked by Arthur Vance and Marcus.

"Clara..." Julian gasped, his voice cracking with sudden, overwhelming terror. "How... how did you—"

"Peters confessed fifteen minutes ago, Julian," Marcus said, stepping forward and tossing a pair of heavy steel handcuffs onto the desk with a loud, metallic CLACK.

Julian scrambled backward in his chair, his eyes darting frantically toward the balcony doors as if contemplating jumping into the snow. "This is a mistake! I didn't... I was just reviewing public code! You can't prove anything!"

"We don't need to prove it to you, Julian," Arthur said, his voice dropping into a cold, terrifying register as he stepped closer. "The FBI Cyber Crime Task Force is already executing a search warrant on your personal server bank in Chicago as we speak. By sunrise, every email, every cryptocurrency transfer, and every recorded call between you, Victoria, and Apex Capital will be in federal hands."

Julian collapsed back into his chair, covering his face with his hands, his body shaking with pathetic, silent sobs.

I walked over to the desk, looking down at the man I had once believed I was going to spend my life with.

"Julian," I said softly.

He slowly pulled his hands away from his face, looking up at me with tear-streaked eyes. "Clara... please... you know I always loved you. Victoria forced me into this! She threatened to ruin my reputation! She told me you hated me!"

I looked at him, feeling a deep, profound sense of disgust—not just at his actions, but at my former self for ever believing this pathetic coward was worthy of my heart.

"You didn't ruin me, Julian," I said, my voice steady and cold as ice. "You just proved to me that the best thing that ever happened to my life was the day you chose Victoria over me."

I turned my back on him.

"Take him away, Marcus," Arthur ordered quietly.

As Marcus handcuffed Julian and dragged him out of the suite, weeping and begging for mercy, I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the snow fall gently over Lake Superior.

Arthur walked up behind me, placing his hands gently on my shoulders. His warmth radiated through my coat, grounding me in the present.

"It's over, Clara," Arthur murmured against my ear. "Apex Capital's board just called my private line. They are pulling out of Harrell Enterprises entirely and offering to sell us their debt portfolio at a eighty percent discount."