Chapter 3: The Scramble for Survival
The aftermath in the ballroom was total chaos. Julian scrambled for his phone, frantically dialing his attorneys, but he was met with a generic "subscriber is unavailable" message. He had been blacklisted from his own network.
Evelyn, meanwhile, was experiencing a full-blown panic attack. She had spent her entire life curating an image of untouchable wealth, and in the span of ten minutes, it had been incinerated. "Call the bank!" she shrieked at Julian. "Call the Chairman!"
"I am calling him!" Julian shouted back, his voice an octave higher than usual. "He’s not answering! Nobody is answering!"
Clara reached her car—a sleek, unassuming black sedan that looked out of place among the Ferraris and Bentleys in the valet line. Her driver, a man who had been with the Montgomery family for decades, opened the door.
Inside the car, the digital landscape was already shifting. Her tablet was alive with notifications. The acquisition of Sterling Logistics was finalized. The public announcement of the hostile takeover was being drafted by her legal team as she spoke.
She didn't feel anger. She didn't feel the need to gloat. She felt a profound, quiet sense of justice. Julian had married her because he thought she was a "project"—a woman he could mold, control, and eventually discard. He had never bothered to look into her background because his own ego had blinded him. He had thought her silence was submission; it was actually observation.
"They're bankrupt, aren't they?" the driver asked, glancing at the monitor.
"Technically, they were insolvent for months," Clara said, staring out at the Manhattan skyline. "Julian was cooking the books to keep the stock price artificially inflated. All I had to do was buy the debt and call the note. It was the simplest financial kill I’ve ever orchestrated."
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She opened the flash drive that had been in her purse all night. It contained the evidence of Julian’s illegal back-door deals—the ones he had used to fund his lavish lifestyle. She hit 'Send to SEC.'
There would be no coming back from this. Not for Julian, and certainly not for Evelyn.
