Chapter 4 - The Unraveling
(Approx. 1500 words)
By six o'clock the following morning, the financial world was in absolute chaos.
The headline on the cover of the Global Financial Times read: "GALA DISASTER: STERLING CHAIRWOMAN REVEALS IDENTITY, PULLS $50M FUNDING FROM PRESCOTT ENTERPRISE." Below the text was a crystal-clear photo of Weston on his knees on the ballroom floor, looking frantically up at me in my silver gown.
Inside the Prescott penthouse, the air was suffocating.
Weston hadn't slept a single second. His charcoal tuxedo lay crumpled in a heap in the corner of his study. He sat at his mahogany desk in his unbuttoned dress shirt, eyes bloodshot, downing his third glass of scotch before sunrise.
The landline was ringing continuously. His personal cell phone was buzzing every three seconds with notifications from board members, creditors, media outlets, and shareholders.
The double doors of his office banged open, and Claudia rushed in, holding a stack of morning papers and her tablet.
"Weston! It's an absolute slaughter!" Claudia cried out, her voice trembling with hysteria. "The stock opened in London three hours ago and dropped eighty-five percent in twenty minutes! The board of directors has called an emergency session for nine AM to remove you as CEO!"
"Shut up, Mother!" Weston roared, slamming his glass down on the desk so hard the dark liquor splashed onto his keyboard. "Just shut up! I'm trying to think!"
"Don't you raise your voice at me!" Claudia snapped back, though her hands were shaking violently. "How could you not know?! How could you live with a woman for eight years and not know she was sitting on a fifty-billion-dollar fortune?!"
"How was I supposed to know?!" Weston screamed, running his hands wildly through his disheveled hair. "She drove a four-year-old Honda when I met her! She cooked dinner every single night! She asked me for money to buy groceries! She acted like a meek, boring, useless house-girl!"
"She was testing you, you idiot!" Claudia yelled, collapsing onto the leather sofa. "And you failed! We both failed! Oh God... what are we going to do? The bank called ten minutes ago. They're reviewing the mortgage on this penthouse! They said our line of credit was cross-collateralized with Prescott Enterprise stock!"
Weston's breath hitched. "What?"
"If the stock crashes below five dollars a share, the bank calls the personal guarantee on this house!" Claudia wept. "We'll lose everything! Weston, you have to fix this! Call her! Beg her! Crawl back to her!"
Weston grabbed his phone with trembling fingers and dialed my personal number.
“The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”
"Dammit!" he threw the phone across the room. It shattered against the wall.
Just then, a sharp, authoritative knock sounded at the front door of the penthouse.
Weston felt a sudden surge of desperate hope. Elowen. She had come back. She was just playing a game to humble him. She was his wife. She loved him. She couldn't actually burn his entire life to the ground.
He scrambled out of his chair and sprinted through the hallway to open the front door.
"Elowen, I—"
Weston froze.
Standing in the hallway was not Elowen. It was a tall, sharp-featured man in a grey pinstripe suit, holding a leather briefcase. Beside him were two uniformed process servers and a pair of armed private security guards.
"Weston Prescott?" the attorney asked coldly.
"Who are you?" Weston demanded, his heart dropping into his stomach.
"My name is Marcus Vance—no relation to Victoria Vance—Senior Legal Counsel for the Sterling Syndicate and chief representative for Madam Elowen Sterling," the lawyer stated smoothly. "I am here to serve you with several legal instruments."
Marcus motioned to the process server, who stepped forward and handed a thick stack of legal documents into Weston’s frozen hands.
"What is this?" Weston stammered, looking at the top page.
"That is a petition for absolute dissolution of marriage," Marcus explained, stepping past him into the foyer as if he owned the place. "In addition, my client has filed for a full forensic accounting of all marital assets, an immediate freezing order on all joint bank accounts, and an emergency injunction barring you from entering any property owned by Sterling Holdings."
"Joint accounts?!" Claudia shrieked from the hallway. "You can't freeze those! My personal allowance comes from those accounts!"
Marcus gave Claudia a pitying glance. "Mrs. Prescott, those accounts were never 'joint' in the legal sense. They were underwritten by corporate proxies managed by Vanguard Nine. Since Vanguard Nine is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sterling Syndicate, those funds have been re-secured pending the outcome of the fraud investigation."
"Fraud investigation?!" Weston yelled, clutching the papers. "What fraud?!"
Marcus opened his briefcase and pulled out a sleek silver folder.
"Seven years ago, Prescott Enterprise received its first major bailout of five million dollars from Vanguard Nine," Marcus said, reading from a document. "Three years ago, another twenty million. Eighteen months ago, fifteen million. Total capital injected by my client into your company over eight years: forty million dollars."
Weston’s jaw dropped. The room seemed to tilt around him. "What... Vanguard Nine was Elowen?"
"Every single time your company was hours away from insolvency, Madam Sterling quietly purchased your debt through Vanguard Nine to protect her husband's dignity," Marcus said, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. "She gave you an empire, Mr. Prescott. And she did it anonymously so you could feel like a king."
Weston stumbled back, hitting the foyer wall.
All those late-night victories... all those press releases where he called himself a financial genius... all those awards...
It had all been her. Every single cent.
"However," Marcus continued coldly, "because you entered into unauthorized secondary debt agreements with Vance Capital last week—using Prescott Enterprise assets that were already pledged as collateral to Vanguard Nine—you have committed clear loan default and corporate fraud. Madam Sterling has executed her right as primary debt holder."
Marcus pulled a final, heavy document from his case and handed it to Weston.
"This is an order of foreclosure. Vanguard Nine has called the forty-million-dollar debt. As of eight o'clock this morning, the Sterling Syndicate has seized one hundred percent of your voting shares in Prescott Enterprise."
Weston dropped the papers. They fluttered across the marble floor like white snow.
May you like
"You're... you're taking my company?" Weston whispered, horror strangling his voice.
"It was never your company, Mr. Prescott," Marcus said, motioning to his security team. "It was her charity project. And as of today, the charity is closed. You have two hours to clear your personal belongings from this penthouse before the locks are changed."
