Chapter 1

I watched the lines of on-screen text floating in front of me and slowly set down my teacup.

The noisy accusations in the private dining room came to a brief halt because of my overly calm movement.

I looked up at Gina, who was sitting on the floor crying her eyes out, and said in a flat tone, "This document is classified, all right. But when you altered the data, you forgot to realign the watermark number on the third page. If you're going to frame me, you could at least do a decent job of the forgery."

Gina's crying caught in her throat. A flash of obvious panic crossed her face, but it was quickly covered up by another look of hurt innocence.

"Clara! What are you talking about? You clearly stole this document from the agency. How can you turn around and accuse me of altering it?"

Wiping her tears, she shrank back against her uncle, Robert Coleman's leg, as if she had suffered some terrible injustice.

"I know you've always been jealous that I found my birth parents, jealous that Uncle Robert treats me—his long-lost niece—so well. But you can't just throw me under the bus to save yourself!"

Uncle Robert's face darkened. He slammed his hand on the table so hard the dishes clattered.

"Clara! Have you lost all sense of decency? Gina just came back to the family, barely passed the exam to get into our city agency, and instead of looking out for her as her older cousin, you go and sell classified state secrets?

"Let me tell you, this isn't over! As a division chief at the city agency, I will not let family loyalty cover up wrongdoing.

"First thing tomorrow, I'm starting the process to have you fired. Then I'll personally hand you over to Internal Affairs."

The relatives at the table saw that the division chief was furious and quickly changed their tune, pointing and whispering about me.

"Clara, how could you? Our family never raised such a greedy, money-grubbing traitor!"

"Exactly. Gina is such a sweet girl. Why do you have to bully her?"

"She's the apple of Robert's eye. You're just some grind who studied her way up from a small town. What makes you so special?"

"You'd better apologize to Gina right now, hand over that bribe money, and maybe Robert will let you do less prison time out of family loyalty."

Listening to these disgusting, two-faced comments, I felt like laughing.

They had no idea. I had studied hard for three years and finally made it into the city agency—but not some ordinary department. I was on the Eighth Inspection Team, specially seconded from the state ethics commission.

This time, I had gone undercover as a new hire into the city agency to secretly investigate Robert's corruption, bribe-taking, and hiring violations over the past few years.

And Gina—this "cousin" who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere—was one of Robert's biggest illegal hiring schemes.

I looked at Robert putting on his grand display of righteousness, and I couldn't hold back my cold smile anymore.

"Uncle Robert, you just said you would uphold justice over family ties?"

I stood up, looking down at him.

"Perfect. You can come back with me to the team and explain all those hiring violations and backroom deals over the past few years."