Chapter 8 - The Mistress’s Desperate PlayDesperation makes vermin do incredibly stupid things.
Brenda, having been violently thrown out of the Kensington company building and stripped of her stolen designer wardrobe, had hit rock bottom. But unlike Andrew, Brenda was a narcissist who thrived on attention. If she couldn't have the Kensington money, she decided she would extort the Escalante fortune.
It was a Thursday afternoon. I was sitting in my corner office on the sixtieth floor of the Escalante tower, reviewing the quarterly acquisitions with Julian Thorne, who had quickly become an indispensable ally and an intoxicating presence in my life.
My private secretary, Elena, knocked urgently and walked in holding an iPad.
"Ms. Escalante, you need to see this," Elena said, her face pale. "It's trending number one on every social media platform."
She placed the iPad on my desk. On the screen was a live video stream. Brenda was sitting in a dingy, dimly lit motel room, crying crocodile tears directly into the camera. She looked disheveled, playing the ultimate victim.
"Mariana Escalante is a monster," Brenda wept, wiping away fake tears. "She lied to her husband for years. She trapped Andrew in a loveless marriage, and when he finally found true love with me, she used her billionaire mafia family to destroy us! She stole my home! She threatened my life! I am hiding in fear for my safety! The world needs to know the truth about the Escalante family!"
Julian leaned over my shoulder, watching the screen. His jaw tightened. "She’s trying to trigger a PR scandal to force a hush-money settlement. Give me the word, Mariana. My media division will scrub this from the internet in ten minutes, and my lawyers will bury her."
I looked at the screen, watching Brenda’s pathetic performance. I didn't feel fear. I felt a cold, calculating amusement.
"No, Julian," I smiled, leaning back in my leather chair. "Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake. Let her stream. In fact, let's boost her audience."
I picked up my phone and called the head of Escalante Cyber Intelligence.
"Broadcast the 'Brenda Protocol' to her livestream immediately," I ordered.
For the past week, my security team had hacked into Brenda's cloud storage. We had recovered every deleted text message, every hidden voicemail, and every private video she had ever sent to Andrew.
On the iPad, Brenda was still crying to her sixty thousand live viewers. "Mariana is a cold, heartless witch who manipulated—"
Suddenly, Brenda’s livestream feed split in two.
On the right side of the screen, a high-definition video began playing. It was Brenda, sitting in the Kensington mansion a month ago, holding a glass of wine and laughing hysterically while talking to her friend on FaceTime.
"Oh my god, Andrew is such an idiot," Brenda's voice echoed from the video, loud and clear for the entire world to hear. "He actually thinks I love him! The guy is a pathetic, whiny mama’s boy. But as soon as he gets his hands on his wife's trust fund, I'm going to drain his accounts, dump him, and move to Paris! It's so easy to manipulate him, it's actually boring!"
In the live feed on the left, Brenda’s face went dead white. She stared at her own monitor in absolute horror as the video played. The live chat, which had been full of sympathy, instantly exploded into a torrential wave of mockery, rage, and laughter.
"No! Wait! That's fake! It's AI!" Brenda shrieked, frantically clawing at her computer keyboard, trying to shut off the stream.
But the cyber team had locked her out of her own account. The stream continued, playing audio clip after audio clip of Brenda mocking Andrew, mocking his mother, and bragging about her gold-digging strategies.
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"Checkmate," Julian murmured, looking at me with a profound, almost dangerous level of respect. "You didn't just ruin her narrative. You destroyed her reputation globally. She will never be able to show her face in public again."
I picked up my champagne flute and took a delicate sip. "I told her to stay out of my way. Now, the whole world knows exactly what she is."
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