I nod. The whole department has been dealing with the fallout. Forensic auditors were brought in. Systems were locked down. They’ve been going through it all. Every login, every transaction, every trace we’ve left behind over the past year and a half. Pulling it apart, piece by piece, trying to understand where it started. Trying to figure out who to blame.
“During the post-breach forensic audit,” he continues, “we identified financial irregularities linked directly to the incident.”
My brow furrows. “What kind of irregularities?”
“Misappropriation of funds,” Sarah says. “Funds were rerouted from dormant project accounts. Small amounts, over several months, designed to avoid detection. Each transfer wasunder the threshold that would trigger automated review. The total, however, is significant.”
“How significant?”
“Just under four hundred thousand dollars.”
Four hundred thousand.
That is not a rounding error. That is not a mistake in accounting. That is theft.
“The transactions,” Chris adds, “were authenticated using two sets of internal credentials. Yours, Julian. And yours, Briana.”
Briana stiffens in her chair. Her knee stops bouncing.
My attention snaps to her.
She is staring at the table, her hands still knotted, her jaw still tight. But there is something else now—a tremor in her lower lip, a flush rising on her neck.
I shake my head, disbelief surging. “I didn’t do anything. I’ve never touched company funds like that.”
Sarah Chen doesn’t blink. She looks at me with the same blank, predatory interest one might show a laboratory rat that has started growing an extra limb. “We’re presenting the evidence as we have it. The digital trail shows actions taken under both your credentials and Ms. Cross’s—timestamps, IP addresses, authorization logs.”
“Then my login was used without my knowledge,” I insist, my mind racing. “Someone had my credentials. My password, my access—someone took them.”
Chris studies me. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
I look at Briana again.
The paleness of her skin. The hard line of her shoulders. The absence of surprise. She stares at that one spot on the table, her jaw locked so tight I expect to hear her molars crack. She hasn’t asked a single question. Hasn’t demanded to see the evidence. She sits in a room where she’s been accused of stealing fourhundred thousand dollars from her employer, and her mouth stays shut.
The timeline locks into place with a sickening clarity.
The transfers started months ago. The same months we were together. She had endless chances to watch me type my password, to use my computer while I stepped out, to scroll through my files alone.
I see it now. Briana leaning over my shoulder while I logged in, her breath warm against my ear. Briana sitting at my desk while I took a call in the hallway, her fingers on my keyboard, her eyes scanning my screen. Briana staying late with me night after night in the empty office, smiling, touching my arm, whispering close while her other hand helped empty the company’s accounts.
She set me up.
She stole from the company. She used my credentials.
She did this.
I open my mouth to say just that when she whispers, barely audible, “I didn’t want to do it.”
Her voice trembles with a softness that’s supposed to sound fragile. But I know her. I see the act underneath. She rehearsed this line in a mirror somewhere before walking into this room.
I turn fully toward her. “What are you talking about?”
She looks up then. Her eyes wet, face crumbling.
“He made me do it,” she says suddenly, the words aimed at my boss, at Legal, at HR.
I feel the floor tilt beneath me. The walls close in. The ceiling presses down. I grab the back of a chair to keep from falling.
