Negative.
Thousands of dollars gone.
I blinked, logged out, logged back in.
Same result.
I felt the first trickle of unease, a low, cold current running through my veins. I checked my savings account.
Empty.
My small investment fund.
Gone.
My retirement contributions.
Wiped clean.
My heart pounded harder than it ever had on the battlefield.
I spent the next few hours combing through statements, page after page, line after line. Most of the charges were small at first—recurring transfers, luxury purchases I didn’t recognize.
Then came the bigger withdrawals. Tens of thousands siphoned into accounts I didn’t own.
At some point, I realized I was gripping the edge of my desk so tightly my knuckles had turned white.
I knew I needed help.
I contacted the bank’s fraud department. They walked me through protocols, reassured me they’d investigate. But even as they spoke, something inside me, something I thought I’d buried, started to stir.
I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to let the thought form fully in my mind.
But it was there.
It had always been there.
I knew who had done this.
It wasn’t strangers. It wasn’t hackers.
It was family.
I traced the paper trail. The fraud investigator confirmed what I already suspected. The accounts the money had been funneled into. The names. The addresses.
They all led back to the house I grew up in.
