Chapter 2: The Bleeding of NexusCore
Chapter 2: The Bleeding of NexusCore
At 6:30 a.m., Matthew Hayes woke up in the plush bed of a boutique hotel in Soho. Beside him, Lauren Thorne was still asleep, her blonde hair spilled across the silk pillows. Matthew smiled, feeling a surge of absolute dominance. He had finally put his wife in her place. Clare had been getting too arrogant, reminding him too often of the early days when she held his hand through the pitch meetings.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. It wasn't a normal text notification. It was a continuous, frantic vibration.
He picked it up. Thirty-seven missed calls. Forty-two text messages.
The first text he opened was from his Chief Financial Officer, David: Matthew, wake up. Someone is shorting our stock. Massively. We’ve lost 14% in pre-market trading, and it’s accelerating. Someone is dumping millions of shares.
Matthew sat up straight, the blood rushing out of his face. "What?" he muttered.
Before he could process it, another call came through. It was the lead investor from Vanguard Ventures, the man who held the keys to NexusCore’s upcoming Series C funding round.
"Matthew," the voice on the other end was cold, stripped of all previous warmth. "The funding is pulled. The deal is dead."
"What do you mean dead? We sign the contracts tomorrow!" Matthew stammered, pulling the blanket off himself. Lauren stirred beside him, blinking sleepily.
"We don't invest in companies run by domestic abusers, Matthew. And we certainly don't invest in men stupid enough to cross Arthur Sterling."
The phone went dead.
Matthew’s hand shook so violently the phone almost slipped from his grip. Arthur Sterling? The old man had cut Clare off seven years ago. He was supposed to be a ghost, a proud billionaire who let his daughter starve rather than admit he was wrong.
Lauren sat up, wrapping the sheet around her chest. "Matty, what's wrong?"
He didn't answer her. He opened his banking app to check his personal liquid assets—the backup funds he kept to stabilize the company's margin calls.
May you like
ACCOUNT STATUS: FROZEN BY COURT ORDER.
A cold sweat broke out across his neck. By sunrise, the empire he thought he owned was already beginning to bleed to death, and he didn't even know where the blade was coming from.
