Chapter 3 - The Corporate Guillotine
Revenge is a dish best served with meticulous financial documentation.
A month later, I was discharged from the hospital. I didn't go into hiding, and I certainly didn't flee to Europe. I moved into a highly secure, luxury penthouse that Owen had helped me lease under a dummy corporation. With my physical strength returning, I turned my brilliant financial mind entirely toward the destruction of the Stanford empire.
Before I married Blake, I was the youngest Vice President of Risk Analysis at a massive Wall Street firm. I knew how to follow the money, and more importantly, I remembered the passwords to Blake’s home office servers. While Victoria and her high-priced lawyers were busy trying to secure bail for Blake, I spent seventy-two straight hours hacking into the Stanford Corporation's shadow ledgers alongside a team of forensic accountants I had hired.
What we found was a goldmine of absolute corruption.
Victoria Stanford hadn't just embezzled millions to pay off assassins. She had been systematically defrauding her board of directors and international investors for over a decade. She had set up hundreds of shell companies in the Cayman Islands to funnel corporate profits directly into her private trusts, dodging millions in federal taxes and leaving the Stanford Corporation dangerously over-leveraged.
I didn't just take this information to the police. That was too simple. I took it directly to the aggressive, bloodthirsty billionaire investors who sat on the Stanford board of directors.
On a rainy Tuesday morning, a massive emergency board meeting was called at the Stanford headquarters. Victoria, entirely unaware of the impending slaughter, sat at the head of the glass conference table, preparing to reassure the investors that Blake's "unfortunate domestic incident" would not affect their quarterly margins.
The heavy oak doors swung open. I walked into the boardroom wearing a sharp, tailored crimson suit, completely obscuring the fading scars on my abdomen. Flanking me on my right was Owen, his presence a grounding, immovable force. Flanking me on my left was Arthur Sterling, the most feared corporate litigator in the country.
"What is the meaning of this?!" Victoria screeched, leaping to her feet, her face turning an ugly shade of purple. "Security! Remove this woman immediately!"
"Security has already been dismissed, Victoria," a prominent investor sitting near the front stated coldly. He slid a thick, five-hundred-page dossier across the glass table. "As has your position as Chairwoman of this board."
Victoria stared at the dossier, her arrogant facade finally cracking. "What is this?"
"Those are the unredacted financial ledgers of the Stanford Corporation for the last ten years," I announced, pacing slowly around the table, enjoying the absolute terror blooming in her eyes. "Ledgers that prove you have embezzled over two hundred million dollars from the very investors sitting in this room. Ledgers that prove you used corporate funds to hire Dr. Vance to assassinate me on an operating table."
I turned to the board members. "Gentlemen, as part of the divorce settlement negotiations, and as restitution for the severe criminal damages inflicted upon me by this family, my legal team has successfully seized forty-five percent of the Stanford Corporation's voting shares. I am now the majority shareholder. And my first act as CEO is the immediate termination of Victoria Stanford."
Victoria lunged at me across the table, her perfectly manicured nails curved like talons. "You psychotic bitch! I will kill you myself!"
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Owen stepped in smoothly, catching her wrist and twisting it firmly behind her back, forcing her face-down onto the glass table. "You aren't killing anyone ever again, Victoria," Owen said, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper.
The doors opened again, and this time, the FBI poured into the room.
