A pounding on the door rattled my Manhattan apartment building at precisely 6:00 AM. Sunlight hadn’t even truly broken over the skyscrapers.
I had barely slept, replaying Arthur Ames’s smug face.
“Julian Croft?” a voice boomed from the other side. “Process servers.”
I peered through the peephole. Two hulking men in cheap suits stood outside, a thick stack of papers in one man’s hand.
They didn’t wait for an answer. Within seconds, a summons was taped to my door.
It was a temporary restraining order, issued by a state judge.
I snatched the documents, my fingers trembling as I scanned the bold type. Arthur’s legal team wasn’t just suing me; they were moving to seize my personal computer and all my digital devices.
The documents claimed I was a threat, that I had stolen “proprietary firm data.”
They wanted the raw bank ledger file, the one proving Arthur’s unauthorized $14.85 million wire transfer.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I had known they would fight, but this was a full-frontal assault on my personal life.
I slipped my hand into my pocket. My fingers brushed the encrypted thumb drive I always kept there, a habit I’d picked up from my father.
The bank ledger was secure.
One of the filings in the stack detailed the legal grounds for the injunction: “Irregularities in the internal audit process regarding transaction 1485-Alpha.”
My eyes scanned further, to a tiny, almost hidden footnote on page seven. It referenced a board resolution from two months prior, approving a “lifetime cultural endowment” to the Metropolitan Arts Council.
The endowment was specifically for the daughter of our firm’s chief compliance auditor.
A cold dread settled in my stomach. A lifetime seat. For an auditor’s daughter.
Arthur hadn’t just bypassed controls; he’d greased them with old-money influence.
I shoved the stack of legal papers onto my kitchen counter, barely noticing the half-eaten bowl of cereal.
The thought of them seizing my laptop, my phone, everything, made my stomach clench. They would find nothing incriminating, but the inconvenience, the sheer violation, was designed to break me.
I pulled on a hoodie, grabbed my worn leather messenger bag, and tucked the thumb drive deep inside a hidden pocket. My laptop was already encrypted, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
A quick glance out the window showed the street was clear.
I bypassed the main lobby and took the service elevator down to the basement, emerging into the crisp, cool air of a Manhattan side alley. The city was just starting to stir, oblivious to the legal war that had just detonated in my apartment.
They wanted to silence me. I wouldn’t let them.
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