My Cheating Husband Smirked When He Kept The House—Until My Movers Stripped It Down To The Bare Floorboards / Chapter 9 / 20

Chapter 9 - The Boardroom MassacreThe executive boardroom of the Azure Development Group was located on the sixtieth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. The room smelled of expensive leather, cold brew, and billions of dollars in capital.

At 10:00 A.M., the Azure board of directors sat around the massive oak table. Carter and I sat on the left side. On the right side sat the CEO of Crestview Developers, a pompous man named Richard, and sitting right next to him, looking like the cat that ate the canary, was Chloe.

Richard stood up to present first.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Crestview is proud to present a revolutionary, eco-friendly compound," Richard boasted, clicking his remote.

My hijacked 3D renders flashed onto the massive screen. It was my design, down to the last reclaimed wood panel. Chloe smirked at me across the table, her eyes glinting with malicious triumph. She thought she had broken me. She thought she had finally won.

"It’s stunning, Richard," the Azure Chairman nodded approvingly. "The cantilevered glass pools are incredibly ambitious. Are you sure the structural integrity can hold that weight on a sand-based foundation?"

"Absolutely," Richard beamed. "My junior acquisitions manager, Chloe, spearheaded the structural integration. She’s assured me the math is flawless."

The Chairman turned to me. "Lauren, your firm is up next. What does Vantage Design have to offer?"

I stood up slowly. I didn't pull out a presentation remote. I didn't look flustered. I smoothed my tailored emerald blazer and walked to the front of the room.

"I don't have a presentation, Mr. Chairman," I said, my voice echoing with crystal-clear authority. "Because Crestview Developers just presented it for me."

The room fell dead silent. Richard frowned. "Excuse me? Are you accusing us of theft?"

"I am not accusing you, Richard. I am proving it," I said, pulling a thick, red-tabbed dossier from my briefcase and dropping it onto the oak table. "Two days ago, your employee, Chloe, paid one of my interns to steal my preliminary blueprints. Last night, she paid him again to steal the final structural load calculations."

Chloe’s face drained of every drop of color. "That’s a lie! She’s just jealous because our design is better!"

"If it’s your design, Chloe," I smiled, a cold, terrifying expression, "then why did you present a blueprint that will physically collapse?"

I tapped the screen, zooming in on the structural schematics Chloe had stolen the night before.

"If you attempt to build those cantilevered pools using the load-bearing math on that screen, the structural tension will snap the steel cables within six months," I explained, looking directly at the Azure Chairman. "The foundation will buckle, the glass will shatter, and the entire west wing of the resort will collapse into the ocean."

Richard stared at the screen, and then turned slowly to look at his lead engineer, who was frantically running the math on a calculator. The engineer looked up, pale and sweating. "She... she’s right, sir. The math is rigged. It’s a death trap."

"I engineered that flaw last night," I announced, delivering the fatal blow. "And I embedded a digital watermark in the source code of those files. A watermark registered to Vantage Design."

The Azure Chairman’s face turned purple with rage. He slammed his fist onto the table, pointing at Richard. "You bring stolen, fatally flawed blueprints into my boardroom?! Get out!"

Richard stood up, his face twisted in absolute fury. He turned to Chloe. "You told me you drafted this! You stole from a competitor and humiliated me in front of a three-hundred-million-dollar board?!"

"Richard, please!" Chloe panicked, tears welling in her eyes.

"You’re fired, Chloe. And I am suing you for corporate sabotage," Richard spat, before storming out of the boardroom.

Chloe sat frozen, her grand, wealthy future evaporating into absolute ruin. She looked at me, weeping pathetic, desperate tears.