First Customer

Nora turned the laptop toward him. The anonymous packet was clean, professional, and poisonous. It included his bank balance, the frozen offshore wire, a fake payment from a shell company, and a timeline designed to make his first trades look less like luck and more like conspiracy. Priya's voice went flat. "That is a kill file." "No," Nora said. "It is an invitation." Ethan looked at her. She tapped the fabricated record. "Whoever sent this does not need me to believe all of it. They need me to ask the first question on record." "And will you?" Nora met his eyes. The air between them became too narrow for anyone else. "I am your first customer," she said. "So build me the machine that proves which part is a lie."