Chapter 1 - The First Strike
The sound of Evan’s calm, practiced voice didn’t make me scream. It didn’t make me cry. Instead, it triggered a strange, ice-cold clarity that I had never experienced in my entire thirty-four years of life.
“Where are you?” I asked. My voice was steady—too steady.
“Claire, please, let’s not make a scene,” Evan sighed on the other end of the line, sounding less like a cheating fiancé and more like an exhausted manager dealing with a difficult employee. “Natalie and I are at our downtown apartment. We wanted to tell you face-to-face, but—well, you know how emotional things get.”
*Emotional.*
That was his favorite weapon. Whenever I pointed out a discrepancy in his schedule, whenever I questioned why corporate funds were being funneled into a mysterious holding account, whenever I pointed out that Natalie was spending an exorbitant amount of time in his office with the blinds drawn—I was just being "too emotional."
“An apartment,” I repeated quietly. “The one we put a deposit on together?”
“It’s temporary, Claire,” Natalie’s voice chimed in from the background, smooth as silk and twice as sharp. I could hear the smirk in her tone. “Don’t make this harder on yourself. You’ve always been brilliant at business, but personal matters… well, let’s just say you never quite mastered them.”
My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned the color of chalk. They thought they had won. They truly believed that because I was heartbroken, I would be paralyzed.
They forgot one very important detail.
I didn’t just build LatticePoint Solutions from a folding table in my bedroom. I owned ninety percent of the voting shares. Evan owned zero. Natalie owned zero. They were employees—high-ranking, traitorous employees, but employees nonetheless.
“Enjoy the apartment,” I said softly. “Because by the end of the day, you won't even be able to afford the coffee you're drinking.”
“Claire, wait—what does that mean?” Evan’s voice finally lost its smug edge, replaced by a sudden, sharp note of panic.
I hung up.
I didn't waste another second. I grabbed my laptop, pulled my hair back into a tight, severe ponytail, and walked out of my house. The wedding invitations sitting on the kitchen counter looked like mocking confetti, but I didn't shed a single tear. Grief is a luxury for people who aren't about to declare war.
By 8:15 AM, I was sitting in the CEO’s office on the thirty-second floor of the LatticePoint Tower. The city of Austin was spread out beneath me, bustling and oblivious.
Ten minutes later, the double doors of my office swung open without a knock.
Evan and Natalie walked in, looking like a power couple straight out of a glossy magazine. Evan had discarded his suit jacket, his tie loosened slightly, while Natalie clutched a leather briefcase like a shield.
“Claire, are you out of your mind?” Evan demanded, slamming his hands down on my mahogany desk. “Locking us out of the corporate accounts? Do you have any idea how unprofessional that is? We have payroll today!”
I didn't look up from my screen. I was reviewing the internal audit logs I had pulled up the moment I sat down. The numbers were staggering. Over the past eight months, Natalie had systematically transferred nearly 2.4 million dollars of company capital into a shell company registered under a Delaware address. And the sole beneficiary of that shell company?
*Pierce & Cross Holdings.*
My eyes slowly lifted from the screen and locked onto theirs. The silence in the room grew so heavy I could hear the faint hum of the air conditioner.
“Payroll will be handled,” I said, my voice cutting through the air like a razor blade. “As for the rest of it… well, let's talk about embezzlement.”
Natalie’s face lost its color instantly, her polished veneer cracking wide open. Evan, however, puffed out his chest, stepping forward to play his favorite role: the savior.
“Embezzlement?” Evan scoffed, though his eyes darted nervously toward Natalie. “Claire, you’re spiraling. You’re lashing out because your pride is hurt. Natalie and I were simply restructuring certain assets for tax efficiency—as part of our corporate merger strategy.”
“Corporate merger?” I stood up slowly, smoothing the wrinkles of my blazer. I pressed a button on my desk intercom. “Security? Please escort Mr. Pierce and Ms. Cross to the lobby. And confiscate all corporate keycards, laptops, and company-issued phones immediately.”
“You can’t do that!” Natalie shrieked, lunging toward the desk. “We are executives of this company! You can’t just fire us without a board vote!”
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“I’m the majority shareholder,” I smiled, a cold, humorless expression that made Evan physically recoil. “And as of right now, you aren't executives anymore. You’re suspects. Have a nice walk home.”
***
