Chapter 4

I returned to Thorne Manor, and the interior was as quiet as ever. Selina hadn’t come back; she was likely still relishing the flattery of the elites in the banquet hall, performing her dual persona of "victim" and "magnanimous leader."

I closed the door and flipped the master switch of the smart-home system. The gentle, motion-sensing lights extinguished, plunging the mansion into utter stillness. The hum of the air circulation system ceased; this fortress that had consumed five years of my life, fine-tuned to every microscopic parameter, lost its soul in an instant.

I walked straight to the study. On the desk, the defense architecture report—the culmination of six months of deduction, intended as my anniversary gift—lay there, quiet as the grave. I picked it up and ignited the fireplace. Flames licked the paper; those intricate, obsessive logical codes and strategic deployments turned to ash.

This was my final work, and the most expensive "funeral" I ever gave this family.

I opened my private terminal. My fingers danced across the virtual keyboard. I didn’t plan to take a single asset. The asset division agreement had long since been drafted by my lawyer; I was requesting only a clean break. Bank accounts, equity dividends, even the luxury goods I possessed—forced upon me by Selina to maintain the family’s image—I signed every waiver with a heavy pen.

My movements were swift, without a hint of hesitation. I reconciled the bank statements, erasing every trace of my personal expenditures. To this family, the existence of Jack Harper had to be purged like a thoroughly wiped segment of code.

Then, the main event.

I entered Thorne Financial’s core audit system. This system was incredibly complex; it wasn't just a ledger, but a data model built upon five years of my labor. It linked offshore currency nodes globally, monitoring every capillary-like transaction Thorne made in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East.

Selina believed her wealth came from talent, from her so-called "saintly" decisiveness. She didn't know that this wealth only stayed safely in her coffers because my algorithms were working in the background—smoothing over regulatory violations, predicting market risks, and dynamically correcting the leverage that could have collapsed her empire at any moment.

My fingers typed a final command into the backend: "Logical Liquidation: Authority Transferred."

I didn't just delete the records; I pulled the "support pillars." I uninstalled all the automated scripts that provided early warnings and automatic hedging. More crucially, I switched all the major financial vulnerabilities I had been "patching" for five years—those crises that should have bankrupted her or invited criminal investigations—from "corrected" back to "original state."

That is to say, when the CFO of Thorne Financial opened his computer tomorrow morning, he wouldn’t see a flawless report, but a massive, catastrophic black hole where financial logic had utterly collapsed.

"Goodbye," I said softly.

I not only dismantled her defenses, I purged all surveillance logs. I initiated an overwrite function on the server, zeroing out five years of life in the manor—video data, biometric identifiers, even interaction logic sequences in the study. On a physical level, I was incinerating Jack Harper’s traces within the Thorne family.

I left a single note in the center of the desk. There were no complaints, no emotional outbursts—only one sentence:

"System operational, but no longer requires maintenance. Wish you well as you navigate this game without its anchor."

I walked into the walk-in closet, locked away the few cheap suits that met Selina’s aesthetic standard, and changed into simple, functional clothing. I took nothing related to the Thorne family.

My phone vibrated—an encrypted call from Selina. By now, she must have discovered the abnormality in the study, or finally realized her "loyal" husband hadn't come home with her.

I looked at the familiar avatar on the screen, a cold smirk touching my lips. I didn't answer. I held the power button down, turned the phone off, and dropped it into the industrial shredder.

When I stepped out the gate this time, the night was still deep, but I felt no chill. I didn't look back; I didn't look at the manor I had once considered my life’s sanctuary, nor did I imagine the chaos Selina would face come morning.

Was she a saint? An heiress? The untouchable Selina Thorne?

Without me, she was nothing.

I hailed a taxi on the corner and gave the driver the name of a remote port. It was the first time in five years I had made a decision based on my own intuition, rather than to serve that cursed business empire or maintain that cold, soulless shrine.

The car drove out of the private estate, the city lights thinning as we moved away. Beyond the neon, a vast world—one that belonged to me—was waiting.

I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. It was a pleasure so fierce that I felt nearly faint. I was finally no one’s appendage, no one’s heater, no one’s cleaner. I was simply myself—an anonymous soul, finally and utterly "logged out."