Chapter 14 - BLACK FRIDAY AND THE HOSTILE TAKEOVER
The week arrived with the tension of a violin string stretched to the breaking point.
Wall Street was buzzing with rumors of a "God-tier" merger between the Vane Group and the remnants of Hollister.
Julian Vane was seen at the Stock Exchange,
looking like a man who had already won the lottery.
Victor was at his side,
the two of them appearing on every business channel as the "saviors" of the industry.
I remained in my office,
silent and invisible.
I had Nate move all of Everest's liquid assets into a series of short-positions against our own subsidiaries.
To the outside world,
it looked like I was panicking,
selling off pieces of my empire to cover my debts.
"Julian's buying up everything you drop,"
Nate reported,
his eyes glued to the flickering red and green lines on his monitor.
"He's leveraged his family's estates,
their art collections,
even their retirement funds.
He's convinced that once the merger is finalized,
the stock will quadruple."
"Let him buy,"
I said,
sipping a cup of black coffee that had gone cold hours ago.
"Let him feel the weight of his new kingdom."
At 10:00 AM on Friday,
the news broke:
"VANE GROUP ANNOUNCES FULL ACQUISITION OF HOLLISTER-EVEREST ASSETS."
The stock price surged.
The media went into a frenzy.
Julian and Victor held a joint press conference on the floor of the exchange,
popping champagne and laughing as the numbers climbed higher and higher.
I watched them on the screen,
their faces glowing with a triumph that was built on a foundation of sand.
"Now,"
I said to Nate.
"Trigger the 'Project Exorcism' protocol."
With a single keystroke,
the algorithm I had found in the vault was injected into the company's core servers.
It wasn't a virus.
It was a correction.
It removed the "flaws" Victor had introduced,
exposing the true state of the company's finances to the public market.
In an instant,
the billions of dollars in "projected earnings" vanished.
The hidden debts,
the environmental liabilities,
the fraudulent offshore accounts—all of it was laid bare for the world to see.
The stock price didn't just drop;
it cratered.
It went from two hundred dollars a share to fifty,
then twenty,
then five,
in the span of twenty minutes.
The trading floor erupted into chaos.
I saw Julian Vane on the screen,
his face turning from a triumphant red to a sickly,
ashen gray.
He was screaming into a phone,
his hands shaking so hard he dropped his glass of champagne.
Victor was standing behind him,
looking like a man who had just seen a ghost.
"The Vane Group is insolvent,"
Nate whispered,
his voice filled with awe.
"They've lost everything,
Cate.
The margin calls are coming in now.
They're being wiped out."
I didn't feel the joy I thought I would.
I felt a cold,
heavy stillness.
I had just destroyed thousands of jobs,
hundreds of pensions,
and the wealth of two families.
But as I looked at the screen,
I saw the face of my mother in my mind.
This was the price of the truth.
This was the cost of stopping the cycle of lies.
The phone on my desk rang.
It was the private line,
the one only my father knew.
I picked it up.
"Catherine,"
he rasped,
and for the first time in my life,
his voice sounded small.
"What have you done?"
"I gave you exactly what you wanted,
Dad,"
I said,
my voice as steady as a heartbeat.
"I gave you the Vane legacy.
I gave you the 'Hollister Gene'.
And I gave you the truth about what you did to Mom."
"You've ruined us,"
he sobbed.
"There's nothing left."
"There was never anything there,
Victor,"
I replied.
"It was all a dream built on the blood of a woman you didn't deserve."
I hung up the phone.
The office was silent again,
save for the hum of the computers.
The war was over.
May you like
The architect had finished the building,
and then she had burned it down.
