Caro's breath stopped the moment Peter's question settled through the phone line. The red warning notification still pulsed violently across her laptop screen, reflecting against her widened eyes while the authorization request remained active under Peter's name. Her fingers hovered uselessly above the keyboard, frozen between panic and disbelief, as rain continued striking softly against the mansion windows behind her. Nothing in the room felt stable anymore. Not the system. Not the silence. Not the man on the other side of the call whose voice had just fractured for the first time since leaving her.
"I didn't do this," she said immediately, the words breaking out too fast to sound controlled. Her chair scraped sharply against the floor as she stood up without realizing it, pulse hammering violently beneath her skin. "Peter, listen to me, I swear to you I did not touch your account." But even as she spoke, another notification flashed across the screen beside her.
