She walked straight to the wall behind my desk and pressed her palm against the panel seam, sliding it open with the smooth ease of someone who’d rehearsed.
In her other hand was a compact, heat-focused cutting tool—sleek, illegal in the wrong hands, and absolutely not something you found at a mall kiosk. She applied it to the biometric seal with calm precision.
Four seconds. That was all it took. The lock disengaged.
Brianna reached inside and withdrew a rectangular slab of brushed metal, heavy enough to suggest importance, unmarked except for a tiny American-flag sticker in the corner that I’d placed there months earlier as a reminder to myself, not a decoration.
To her, it probably looked like a luxury crypto wallet.
She lifted it toward the camera, eyes glittering, lips forming the words without sound.
“Found it.”
Then she turned and left as casually as if she’d just borrowed a charger.
She didn’t know she’d activated a silent federal warrant.
She didn’t know that what she was holding wasn’t money.
It was evidence.
And my family had just carried evidence straight into a celebration full of champagne, music, and people who thought consequences were something that happened to strangers.