Chapter 4 - The Rat in the Attic
By Wednesday afternoon, the financial press had picked up the blood in the water.
The Wall Street Journal ran a side-by-side photo of Grant and me on their front business page under the headline: "CAKE BREAKUP TRIGGERS FORECLOSURE: NORTHSTAR CAPITAL MONETIZES VANCE DEFAULT."
Public sympathy, which Eleanor Vance had desperately tried to sway by leaking fake stories to tabloid columnists about my "unstable emotional outbursts," flipped dramatically when an anonymous hotel staff member uploaded Kyle’s original 4K video of the cake smash to TikTok.
It went viral within three hours. Ten million views. Twenty million views.
The video clearly showed Grant grabbing my hair, forcing my head down into the sugar tiers, his face twisted in a smug, cruel smile while his mother clapped in the background. The comment section was an absolute wasteland for the Vance family reputation. Corporate sponsors began dropping their partnerships with Vance hotels by the hour.
I was sitting in my corner office at Northstar Capital, reviewing the asset seizure inventory, when Mara walked in without knocking.
"We have a problem," Mara said, setting her tablet on my desk.
"Define 'problem,'" I said, not looking up from my ledger. "Is it a legal hold or a public relations hiccup?"
"Neither," Mara said grimly. "It’s an insider problem. Someone within Northstar just tried to leak our private valuation matrix for Vance Hospitality’s Miami asset to Grant’s defense team."
I stopped writing. I looked up slowly.
Northstar Capital was a lean, tightly controlled operation. I employed forty people, every single one of whom had been vetted personally by me and paid well above market rates to ensure absolute loyalty.
"Who was it?" I asked.
"The digital footprint points to an internal IP address assigned to our senior analyst team," Mara said, bringing up an access log on her tablet. "Specifically, the workstation belonging to Todd Miller."
Todd Miller. A sharp, twenty-eight-year-old analyst I had hired eighteen months ago from Goldman Sachs. He was quiet, brilliant with numbers, and had been leading the financial modeling on the Vance Hospitality due-diligence package.
"Where is Todd right now?" I asked, my voice dangerously quiet.
"He's in the second-floor conference room finishing the preliminary liquidation report," Mara answered.
"Bring him to my office," I said. "And call security to stand outside the door."
Five minutes later, Todd walked into my office. He was wearing his usual slim-fit blue shirt and chinos, but his face was unnaturally pale. His knuckles were white as he clutched a leather notebook against his ribs.
"Ms. Morgan?" Todd said, his voice squeaking slightly. "Mara said you wanted to see me about the Miami asset breakdown?"
"Sit down, Todd," I said, gesturing to the heavy leather chair across from my desk.
He sat down awkwardly, sitting right on the edge of the cushion.
I leaned back in my chair, folding my hands over my knee. I didn't say anything for ten long seconds. The silence in the office stretched until the air felt heavy enough to break glass.
"How much did Kyle offer you, Todd?" I asked softly.
Todd flinched as if I had thrown a glass of water in his face. "W-what? I don't... I don't know what you mean, Ms. Morgan."
"Kyle Vance," I clarified, my voice calm, almost conversational. "Grant’s cousin and best man. The one who thought filming my humiliation was funny. He reached out to you on an encrypted messaging app four days before the wedding, didn't he?"
Todd’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. A bead of sweat trickled down from his hairline, tracing a path past his temple.
"We ran a forensic mirror on your corporate laptop ten minutes ago, Todd," Mara spoke up from the door, her voice flat. "We found the staging folder. You transferred the proprietary discount rate models—the ones that prove Northstar’s valuation of the Miami hotel is thirty percent higher than the current distress bid—to an external flash drive at 11:14 AM today."
Todd buried his face in his hands, his shoulders beginning to shake.
"They promised me..." Todd choked out, his voice muffled by his palms. "They promised me a managing director role at their new holding company in Europe. They said... they said you were just using the company to settle a personal vendetta. They said you were going to ruin hundreds of hotel employees just to get back at Grant!"
I leaned forward, placing my elbows on the desk, looking at the young man with an overwhelming sense of disappointment.
"You idiot, Todd," I said softly. "They don't have a new holding company in Europe. They don't even have enough money to pay their electricity bill next week. They used you to steal our internal valuation so they could argue in bankruptcy court that Northstar is acting in bad faith to artificially depress their asset values."
"I... I didn't mean to hurt Northstar," Todd sobbed. "Please, Ms. Morgan. Don't ruin my career. I’ll delete the files! I’ll sign whatever you want!"
"You're not just fired, Todd," I said, standing up and pulling a folder from my drawer. "You're under arrest. Industrial espionage and breach of fiduciary duty under state financial codes carry a mandatory corporate prosecution mandate at Northstar. There’s an investigator waiting downstairs in the lobby with two detectives."
Todd looked up, his face slick with tears, terror written in every line of his features. "Ms. Morgan, please!"
"Take him down, Mara," I said, turning my back to him to look out the window at the rain. "I have a bankruptcy hearing in twenty-four hours, and I don't intend to let traitors slow me down."
May you like
As security escorted the weeping analyst out of the room, I looked at my reflection in the dark window pane.
Grant thought he was playing a game of corporate chess against an emotional woman. He didn't realize that every move he made—every bribe, every lie, every desperate leak—was simply giving me more rope to tie around his family's neck.
