The quiet hum of Elias’s study was broken only by the soft tapping of a keyboard. The light from his laptop screen illuminated his face as he leaned forward, focused and unblinking. Across the room, one of his most trusted tech experts—an anonymous hacker known only by the alias “Kade”—was sitting on the couch, connected remotely through a secure video call.

“She was careful,” Kade said, his voice low but confident. “She used shell accounts and bounced the money through multiple channels. But she made a mistake.”

Elias sat up straighter. “Go on.”

“There’s a flagged transaction—sixty thousand transferred from a dormant account that just became active last month. The...