Chapter 5 - The Family Business
The glass walls of the forty-second floor seemed to close in around me, the sleek steel and indigo lights suddenly feeling less like a tech sanctuary and more like a cage.
“Richard?” I said, the name feeling foreign and heavy on my tongue. “Arthur’s brother?”
“COO, executive board member, and the primary internal opponent of Arthur’s expansion strategy,” Elena stated calmly, as if she were reading the weather report. “Arthur wants to open-source our quantum security protocols to secure government contracts. Richard wants to sell them to private enterprise—or foreign bidders—before the board votes next month.”
“And Vanessa?”
“She was a convenient, narcissistic asset,” Elena said, pulling up a financial wire trace that linked the offshore shell company directly to a personal savings account in Vanessa’s name. “She thought she was playing high-stakes corporate intrigue. In reality, she was a cheap mule. Richard used her because her connection to you gave him direct, deniable access to your early research drafts.”
I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the tiny, frantic motion of traffic far below. The rain was beating against the reinforced glass, streaking the view of the city in distorted gray lines.
Everything shifted into sudden, brutal focus.
The way Vanessa had mocked my job offer. The way Mom had always shielded her, whispering warnings not to overshadow her older sister. The family dinners where I was told to hide my awards, my scholarships, my success—all of it wasn't just ordinary sibling toxicity. It was a systemic effort to keep me small, compliant, and unaware of the world Vanessa was stumbling through.
If I had stayed in my lane—if I had taken a quiet, low-level job at some regional firm—I never would have looked under the hood. I never would have seen the encryption footprints. I would have been the convenient scapegoat when the federal investigation finally dropped on Apex Media.
The door behind us hissed open.
Arthur Vance walked in, carrying two paper cups of black coffee. He didn't look like a billionaire tech mogul in that moment; he looked like an exhausted man fighting a war inside his own house.
He handed one of the cups to me.
“You look like you’ve just realized the game is rigged,” Vance said quietly, walking over to stand beside me at the glass.
“You knew,” I said, not looking at him. “When you hired me. You didn't just want a systems architect. You needed someone with legal standing who could legally access the audit logs without triggering Richard’s internal alarms.”
“Richard thinks he’s smarter than everyone in this building,” Vance replied, his voice hard as iron. “He thinks because he shares my last name, the board will protect him when the federal regulators come knocking next Tuesday.”
He turned his head, his dark eyes fixing on mine with absolute intensity.
“The audit starts tomorrow morning, Claire. Richard doesn't know you’re on this floor yet. He thinks you’re just another graduate he can intimidate or discredit if things get messy.”
Vance paused, taking a slow sip of his coffee.
“He’s planning to call an emergency executive session tomorrow at noon to invalidate your employment contract on the grounds of family conflict of interest. If he succeeds, you’re fired before your first official day, and the audit dies with you.”
I looked down at the titanium stylus in my hand, then back at the data streams still scrolling endlessly across Elena’s screens.
May you like
“He thinks I’m just Vanessa’s little sister,” I whispered.
“Prove him wrong,” Vance said. “Or he’ll destroy your career the exact same way your sister tried to destroy that piece of paper.”
