Chapter 3 - The Desperate Counterattack
By two o'clock the following afternoon, Victoria’s luxury high-rise apartment in downtown Chicago felt less like a sanctuary and more like a gilded cage.
The rain was still pouring outside, drumming relentlessly against the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the skyline. Inside, the apartment was a disaster zone. Expensive designer dresses lay strewn across the velvet sofa, luggage sat half-unpacked near the foyer, and empty wine glasses littered the marble kitchen island.
Victoria paced the living room floor like a trapped animal, her phone glued to her ear.
"What do you mean, dropped?" Victoria snarled into the receiver, her voice raspy from a night spent drinking and screaming into pillows. "I’m your top client, Julian! You spent six months building my image for the charity circuit!"
"Past tense, Victoria," replied Julian Vance, the head of Chicago’s most ruthless high-society PR firm, his tone ice-cold. "I’ve seen the video. Half the room recorded it on their phones. By midnight, it was circulating in every private WhatsApp group from Gold Coast to Winnetka. By six this morning, three major board members at Northstar called my agency to make sure I wasn't associated with you anymore."
"It was a misunderstanding!" Victoria screamed. "The old woman disguised herself! She set me up!"
"Victoria, listen to me carefully," Julian snapped. "In this city, you can be greedy. You can even be mean. But you cannot be caught humiliating the mother of a billionaire while trying to look like a saint. Your reputation is radioactive. Do not call this office again."
The line went dead.
Victoria threw the phone against the plush sofa. It bounced onto the rug, buzzing instantly with a news alert from a local business blog: NORTHSTAR SYSTEMS HEIR DUMPS SOCIALITE FIANCÉE AFTER DRAMATIC ESTATE INCIDENT.
She gripped the edge of the kitchen counter, her knuckles turning white. Her apartment lease was fifty-five hundred dollars a month. Her credit cards were maxed out from buying the wardrobe required to secure Daniel’s proposal. She had burned through her life savings over the last eleven months, banking entirely on the assumption that once the six-carat diamond was on her finger, Daniel’s fortune would absorb her debts.
Now she was penniless, disgraced, and completely ruined.
"No," she muttered to herself, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. "No, I didn't spend a year playing the sweet, innocent little orphan for nothing. You don't get to throw me out like trash, Daniel."
She picked up her phone and dialed a number she had sworn she would never use—a contact she had tucked away during her second month of dating Daniel.
The phone rang three times before a smooth, gravelly voice answered.
"Victoria Collins. I heard about your grand performance last night."
The man on the other end was Julian Mercer—no relation to the PR agent, but a far more dangerous man. Mercer was the CEO of Vanguard Tech, Northstar’s fiercest and most unethical corporate competitor. Mercer had been trying to breach Northstar’s proprietary cybersecurity framework for three years without success.
"I need fifty thousand dollars cash, Julian," Victoria said without preamble. "And I need a press team that isn't afraid to get dirty."
Mercer let out a dark, amused chuckle. "Fifty thousand is pocket change, my dear. But what do you have that’s worth that kind of money? Daniel Carter’s affection clearly isn't an option anymore."
"I spent eleven months sitting in Daniel’s private office while he worked late," Victoria said, her voice dropping into a sinister, conspiratorial whisper. "He thought I was reading fashion magazines. He didn't notice that I took photographs of his whiteboard notes, his private server access keys, and the preliminary architecture for Northstar’s new military contract."
Silence stretched over the phone line for three full seconds. The amusement vanished from Mercer’s voice, replaced by cold, calculating greed.
"Are you telling me you have the encryption schematics for Project Aegis?" Mercer asked quietly.
"I have enough to destroy Northstar’s stock value by forty percent before the markets close on Friday," Victoria hissed. "And I have enough personal dirt on Daniel to ruin his reputation in every board room in the country. I’ll make him look like an abusive, paranoid sociopath who used his mother to entrap women."
"Meet me at the Drake Hotel in an hour," Mercer said flatly. "Bring the flash drives. If the data is real, you’ll get your fifty thousand... plus a ten percent cut of whatever Vanguard gains when Northstar crashes."
May you like
Victoria hung up the phone. A slow, poisonous smile spread across her face as she walked toward her bedroom closet to retrieve a hidden safe behind her shoe rack.
"You wanted a show, Margaret?" Victoria whispered to the empty room. "I’ll give you a finale you’ll never forget."
