“They have active monitoring on any query containing those specific old file directories,” Sarah said, sitting back on her heels.

She pushed her glasses up her nose, her fingers trembling slightly.

“But I got the raw packet pull before the admin kill-switch hit us.”

“You saved it?” I asked.

“I mirrored the entire directory to a local partitioned drive three minutes ago,” she said, pointing a finger at a small, silver external drive that sat unlit on the floor. “It’s completely air-gapped now.”

I looked at the small metal square.

Inside that casing lay the digital wreckage of my past.

Five years ago, a series of text messages had appeared on Blake’s personal phone, seemingly sent from my private number.

Those messages detailed a betrayal I had never committed, a corporate sell-out of his clean-energy patents to his biggest rival.

The confrontation had been swift, brutal, and orchestrated to perfection.

Blake had looked at the screen, looked at me, and believed the digital print over my voice.

I had left New York three days later, pregnant and silent, determined to raise my sons far from the Harrington shadow.