The notification on my phone was a quiet, digital chime, but it landed in my mind like a guillotine. `ALERT: Unauthorized access to archive drive 'CHLOE_DESIGN_ARCHIVE' detected.`
I watched the live feed on my tablet, my face a placid mask. Alexander’s security team was surgical. I could see her cursor—Elena’s cursor—a nervous, darting arrow of light in the dark of my old studio. It was a violation so profound it bypassed anger and went straight to a place of cold, crystalline clarity. She was a grave robber, picking through the bones of my past.
Her cursor danced over folders, a magpie looking for something shiny. It hesitated over "Couture," dallied with "Bridal," and then, just as I knew it would, it settled. It selected the one folder a true artist would never touch, but a desperate
