They said, ‘This is just a formality.’ That’s when my phone vibrated. Not a message—a system alert. Unauthorized access detected. I smiled and said, ‘Sure, let me grab my bag.’ What they didn’t know was this: the system they were stealing from me had already noticed. And it never forgets.
When I came back from lunch, two men were already at my desk. Both wore suits too expensive for a Wednesday, the kind that whispered outside counsel. One was flipping through my sticky notes like evidence. The other held a company laptop with latex gloves, as if it might bite. “Ms. Carter,” the thinner tie…