Chapter 5 - A Cornered Rat Barks
The elevator doors opened directly into the executive floor of Caldwell Technologies.
Twenty-four hours ago, this floor had been a bustling hive of self-congratulatory executives whispering about multi-million-dollar bonuses. Today, it looked like the deck of the *Titanic* thirty minutes after hitting the iceberg.
Junior analysts scrambled through corridors clutching banker boxes. Secretaries were sobbing in phone booths. Security personnel stood guard outside the executive suites, checking badges with paranoid intensity.
When I stepped off the elevator, flanked by Marcus Vance and two Sullivan private security officers, the floor went completely still.
The whisper spread like wildfire through the glass partitions: *“Sullivan is here.”*
I walked straight toward the boardroom. But before I could reach the double glass doors, a figure stumbled out of the secondary stairwell, lunging toward me.
“Rebecca!”
Jason looked like a man who hadn't slept in three days, even though it had only been twelve hours. His dress shirt was stained at the collar, his eyes were bloodshot and wild, and his hands trembled violently. Caldwell’s building security immediately stepped forward to tackle him, but I raised a single hand, signaling them to hold.
“Let him speak,” I commanded.
Jason stopped three feet from me, breathing heavily. He looked between the cold, indifferent faces of the employees watching through the glass walls—people who had bowed to him yesterday and were now looking at him like a diseased stray dog.
“You set me up,” he whispered, his voice trembling with manic paranoia. “You knew about Madison the whole time. You let me authorize that transfer so you could destroy me!”
“You authorized a fraudulent transfer using an offshore account in your mistress’s name,” I replied, my voice carrying cleanly across the open trading floor. “Did I hold the gun to your head, Jason? Did I force you into her bed? Did I force you to steal from my company?”
“It was Croft!” Jason yelled, spitting slightly in his panic. “Madison told me Croft would guarantee our safety! She said we’d have fifty million dollars in Switzerland! She played me, Rebecca! Don't you understand? I am the victim here!”
The sheer, staggering magnitude of his pathetic nature almost made me pity him. Almost.
“You are not a victim, Jason,” I said, stepping closer until only inches separated us. The icy authority in my voice drove him back a step. “You are a weak, vain, mediocre man who mistook my generosity for his own genius. You thought you were playing chess with corporate titans, but you were merely a pawn Julian Croft used to try and touch my hem.”
“I’m your husband!” he screamed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched sob. “We were married for eleven years! You can't just erase eleven years of marriage over a mistake!”
“You erased it the moment you let that woman put her hands on me,” I said, my voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “You stood before six hundred people and threatened to divorce me if I defended myself against your pregnant mistress. You chose her. You chose your vanity. And now, you will pay the invoice.”
I turned away from him and faced the boardroom doors.
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“Arthur Vance is waiting for me,” I said to the security guards. “Ensure Mr. Caldwell joins us. I want him to see exactly how much his vanity cost.”
***
