Chương 18 - The Leak at Midday
She didn't answer right away.
We sat in the back of her armored Maybach as the city of Chicago woke up around us. Yellow cabs began to fill the streets, commuter trains rumbled along the elevated tracks, and the morning sun reflected brilliantly off the dark waters of the Chicago River.
"Ten years ago," Vivian began, staring out the tinted window, her voice barely louder than the hum of the electric engine, "my father discovered that Julian Vance had established an illegal arbitrage ring using corporate treasury funds. My father was weak, Leo. He had heart trouble. He couldn't stomach the scandal. He needed someone to take the blame."
"So he picked Arthur Sterling," I said, my knuckles turning white against the leather seat.
"Arthur refused to lie," Vivian said, turning to look at me, tears glistening on her eyelashes. "Your father was a man of integrity, Leo. He threatened to go straight to the attorney general. That night, my father called him. I don't know what was said during that call. Nobody does. But three hours later, your father's car hit the bridge barrier at ninety miles an hour."
A heavy, suffocating silence filled the car.
"I didn't find out until two months ago," Vivian whispered, her hand reaching out, tentatively resting on mine. "When Julian tried to take over the board, he opened the old sealed safe in my father's private vault. He showed me the recordings of that phone call. He threatened to release it to the press and destroy my father's memory forever if I didn't marry him and merge the family holdings."
I looked down at her hand. Her fingers were trembling. The untouchable, ruthless CEO of Mercer & Holloway was completely stripped bare before me.
"That's why you went to singles night," I realized softly. "Julian wanted an arranged corporate marriage to seal the silence. You had to find a counterweight."
"I needed a partner who had every reason to hate the Mercer family, but every incentive to protect the firm," she confessed, her voice breaking. "I picked you because I thought you were ruthless, Leo. I thought you would see the dollar signs and play along. I never expected..."
"You never expected what?"
"I never expected to fall in love with you," she whispered.
Before I could process the words, my phone in my pocket began to scream.
Not a buzz. A full emergency alert tone.
At the exact same instant, Vivian’s phone lit up on her lap with sixty incoming notifications per second.
The chauffeur hit the brakes slightly, looking back through the glass partition with wide, alarmed eyes. "Ms. Holloway... you need to look at CNBC. Right now."
Vivian swiped her phone open.
Across the screen of every major financial network in America ran a blazing red ticker banner:
**BREAKING NEWS: EXPLOSIVE AUDIO LEAK EXPOSES HOSTILE TAKEOVER PLOT AT MERCER & HOLLOWAY. SECRET RECORDINGS REVEAL CEO VIVIAN HOLLOWAY AND EVP LEO STERLING CONSPIRING TO DEFRAUD SHAREHOLDERS AND FABRICATE EVIDENCE AGAINST FORMER CEO JULIAN VANCE.**
Attached to the headline was an audio file.
Vivian pressed play with a trembling thumb.
A voice—my voice, seamlessly edited and spliced from the night at Table 7 and the server room raid—blared through the car's speakers:
*"...I don't care about the board. I don't care about Vance. We forge the ledger, freeze the shares, and split the fifty percent equity between us..."*
Followed by Vivian’s voice:
*"...The press will buy whatever story we feed them. Arthur Sterling's son will take the blame if anything breaks..."*
"It's an AI deepfake," I muttered, my stomach plunging into an icy abyss. "Spliced with real audio from the server room wiretaps."
"Elena Cross," Vivian whispered, her face completely drained of color as she stared at the plummeting stock chart on her phone. "She stalled us at The Vault. She didn't want a deal. She was waiting for the market opening bell."
Mercer & Holloway shares were down twenty-two percent in pre-market trading.
May you like
And the trading day hadn't even begun.
***
