Chapter 1: The Flaw Nobody NoticedThe Family's Biggest Mistake

At 2:47 p.m., more than 300 red alerts flashed across the screens in Langford Group's financial control center.

The money hadn't been stolen. It was way worse than that because no one in the entire company could use a single dollar.

Five billion dollars in client assets were locked in clearing accounts. The phones wouldn't stop ringing as banks, investment firms, and federal regulators scrambled for answers.

My father, Richard Langford, sat in the conference room, staring at an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. My cousin, Ryan Langford, was glued to the server status reports, his face growing paler by the minute.

The cybersecurity team had spent hours sifting through every system log from the night before, trying to figure out how someone got in. Unfortunately, they couldn't find a thing.

There were no firewall alerts, failed login attempts, or even a hint of suspicious activity.

The monitoring system showed them that everything was running perfectly, and that's precisely what worried me.

Three years ago, I'd watched another financial system go down in exactly the same way. I'd tried everything to save it, but I still failed.

Now that I was given a second chance at life, I'd promised myself that I'd stay out of this. Right now, all I wanted was to keep my head down, avoid the family's business, and spend my days gaming in peace on the company headquarters' top floor.

At least that was the plan.

I couldn't stop myself from freezing like a deer in headlights the moment I glanced at the system architecture diagram.

Because there it was.

A tiny payment gateway was buried among dozens of connections. It was so insignificant that everyone else had overlooked it.

I walked over and pointed at the screen. "You're all looking in the wrong place."

Then, I tapped the payment gateway. "This is where they got in. Right here."

* * *

When I pushed the conference room door open, I wasn't surprised to see everyone staring at the giant screen on the wall.

The screen might as well be a sea of red.

After all, the company's clearing accounts were frozen, which meant that transfer permissions were locked. As a result, client authorization requests were piling up by the second.

My father, Richard Langford, sat at the head of the table with an unlit cigarette between his fingers. Usually, he would raise hell if anyone were to smoke in the conference room. Yet, today, he clearly had bigger things to worry about.

"Who let you in?"

My cousin, Ryan, was the first to notice me. He kept his voice low, almost as if my presence alone might somehow make the situation worse.

"I was just passing by," I said lightly, setting the box of mechanical keyboard keycaps I'd been carrying beside the door. "I heard quite a commotion when I did."

My father looked up, his brows furrowed. "This isn't one of your games, George."

"I know." I glanced at the projection screen. "It sure doesn't look like you guys are having much fun."

The room fell silent for a moment.

Dylan Bowers, a cybersecurity consultant, slid a printed report across the table. "At 3:12 a.m. yesterday, someone exploited a flaw in our authorization system and changed the fund transfer rules."

He tapped the report. "The problem is, there's no record of anyone logging in. Every server is running normally, network traffic looks clean, and all authentication checks are passing."

Leon Hudson, the chief systems architect, was quick to interject, "George, this isn't some hacker movie. Permissions don't just change on their own. If someone altered them, there has to be evidence somewhere. We just haven't found it yet."

Xavier Shannon, the federal regulatory representative, checked his watch before speaking, "You've already been given your final deadline. You have 24 hours to restore the system and submit a complete incident report."

He turned toward my father. "If you fail, Langford Group's operating license will be suspended. The company will also be held responsible for the five billion dollars in affected client assets."

Ryan swallowed hard and barely managed to say, "We still have time."

"Having time doesn't mean you can sit around reassuring yourselves that everything will be fine," Xavier snapped in frustration.

I'd long stopped paying attention to their argument by then.

Instead, my eyes were glued to the system architecture diagram projected onto the wall. It displayed the company's firewalls, identity management servers, payment gateways, and fund transfer services in clear display. They were even linked in a complicated web of lines and boxes.

Yet, it still took me less than ten seconds to spot something strange.

It was located near the bottom of the diagram, a thin gray line representing the payment gateway's persistent connection channel.

I pointed at it and asked, "Did anyone check this?"

Leon followed my finger and frowned. "Of course. We've checked every interface."

"How long does that connection stay open?" I questioned.

"It follows the standard configuration."

"Which is?"

He hesitated for a moment before answering, "30 seconds."

I raised an eyebrow. "You sure about that?"

Dylan flipped through the documents in front of him. "The configuration logs do say 30 seconds."

I couldn't help smiling. "Yes, but that's just what the logs say. It doesn't mean that's what's actually happening."

My father's expression darkened. "George, enough. Stop wasting everyone's time."

I ignored him and pointed at the gray line again. "Your authentication system revalidates access every 30 seconds, right? But the payment gateway allows existing connections to stay open."

I turned toward Leon. "If those connections stay active longer than the authentication window, someone could swap out the request payload between security checks without triggering a new authentication request."

Leon gave a dismissive laugh. "You've never even touched our codebase. What makes you think you've suddenly found a vulnerability that our entire team missed?"

"Because it's right there," I retorted, but I didn't bother explaining further.

Red warnings kept flashing one after another on the giant screen across the conference room. More requests had piled up with every passing second during our back-and-forth, adding pressure to everyone around the table.

Dylan finally raised his head. "What exactly are you referring to?"

I pointed at the payment gateway again. "The one thing nobody in this room thought to question."

I paused and looked around the table, making sure everyone was paying attention.

"If every security system is working perfectly, every login is legitimate, and every authentication check is passing..." I tapped the gray line on the screen. "Then, how the hell did someone steal your authority to move five billion dollars?"