Carter: Get off me! Get your hands off me, you useless security guards!
Victoria: Carter, darling, don't move too fast! You might have broken a rib when you hit that cart!
Carter: I'm fine, Mother! Where is she?! Where did that crazy woman go?!
Victoria: She ran away like the coward she is! Did you see how she attacked you in front of the entire Dallas elite?!
Carter: She didn't just attack me, Mother. She tripped me like she's been trained for combat!
Victoria: She is a psychotic gold digger, Carter! I told you not to marry her three years ago!
Victoria: She was probably drunk on champagne and slipped into the basement storage unit on her own!
Carter wiped a streak of red wine from his forehead, struggling to his feet while the guests whispered behind their silk napkins.
Carter: She was bleeding, Mother. Her face was cut open. How did that happen in a storage unit?
Victoria: She probably scratched herself to make a scene! She wanted to humiliate us at our own charity gala!
Carter: Sarah! Where is Sarah?! Get my assistant over here right now!
Sarah, a young woman holding a tablet, hurried through the crowd toward Carter, her eyes wide with anxiety.
Sarah: Yes, Mr. Sterling? I'm right here. Should I call an ambulance for your injuries?
Carter: I don't need a doctor, Sarah! I need you to pull up the security footage from the west wing corridor!
Victoria: Carter, don't waste time on this! The press is outside! We need to control the narrative before the headlines hit the morning news!
Carter: I want to see what happened before she walked into this room, Mother! Sarah, open the security app on your tablet!
Sarah: I'm trying, Mr. Sterling... but the application isn't responding.
Carter: What do you mean it's not responding? We spent two million dollars on the grand hall's digital infrastructure!
Sarah: The system is showing an error code... It says 'Connection Terminated by Root Administrator.'
Victoria: Root administrator? That's ridiculous! Carter, you're the root administrator of Sterling Holdings!
Carter: Give me the tablet, Sarah!
Carter snatched the tablet from Sarah's hands, his fingers frantically tapping the glass screen as the red error box blinked repeatedly.
Carter: This can't be right... My login credentials aren't working. It says 'Account Does Not Exist.'
Victoria: Is it a glitch? The storm earlier tonight must have disrupted the server mainframe in the basement!
Carter: A storm doesn't delete administrator accounts, Mother!
Sarah: Mr. Sterling... my phone is vibrating. It's the chief technology officer from headquarters.
Carter: Put it on speaker right now!
CTO Marcus: Mr. Sterling! Thank God I reached you! Something catastrophic is happening to the central servers!
Carter: Marcus, what are you talking about?! I'm at the gala!
CTO Marcus: Someone initiated a full system wipe ten seconds ago! The main cloud servers, the local backups, the encrypted drives—everything is being overwritten with zeroes!
Victoria: What?! Stop them! Shut down the power in the building!
CTO Marcus: We can't, Mrs. Sterling! The command came from the primary owner's master key! The system thinks the request is authorized!
Carter: I didn't authorize anything! I'm standing in the middle of the ballroom!
CTO Marcus: It wasn't your key, Mr. Sterling... It was the master key assigned to the original founder of the software... Elena Sterling!
Carter froze, the tablet slipping slightly in his grip as Victoria let out a sharp, horrified gasp.
Victoria: Elena?! She was just a schoolteacher when you met her!
Carter: No, Mother... She wasn't a schoolteacher. She was the lead software architect for Vance Security Systems before we got married.
Victoria: You told me she had no family and no assets!
Carter: Because she wanted a quiet life! I gave her access to our corporate network two years ago when she helped debug our banking platform!
CTO Marcus: Mr. Sterling! The corporate bank accounts... the automated transfer protocols have been triggered!
Carter: Transferred where?! Marcus, stop the wire transfers!
CTO Marcus: I can't! Four hundred million dollars is moving out of the primary holding account right now!
Victoria: FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS?! THAT'S OUR ENTIRE LIQUID ASSET PORTFOLIO!
Carter: Elena... What have you done?