Chapter 7 - The Microphone
The wooden stairs up to the stage felt like the steps of a temple. Olga ascended them with absolute grace.
The Principal was smiling warmly, extending the heavy, gold-plated medal toward her. Olga accepted it, bowing her head slightly, but she didn’t step back into the line of graduates. Instead, she walked directly to the center of the stage.
She grasped the standing microphone.
The applause in the auditorium slowly died down, replaced by a ripple of confusion. Graduates weren't supposed to give speeches at this point in the ceremony.
In the front row, Jack was practically vibrating with rage and panic. He half-stood, gesturing aggressively for her to step away. Blake was glaring at her, realizing for the first time that his sister was entirely out of his control.
“Thank you, Principal Davies,” Olga’s voice rang out, crystal clear and unshakeable, filling every corner of the massive hall. “And thank you to the faculty. But most of all, I want to thank my family, sitting right here in the front row.”
She gestured gracefully toward Jack, Abigail, and Blake. The spotlight caught them, and a polite smattering of applause rippled through the audience. Jack forced a sickeningly tight smile, though his eyes screamed murder.
“My family taught me everything I know about finance,” Olga continued, her tone light, conversational, but laced with a lethal edge. “My father, Jack Vance, and my brother, Blake Vance, run Vance Holdings. They taught me about aggressive asset management. They taught me about offshore routing.”
In the third row, sitting in the VIP section, three men in expensive suits suddenly sat up very straight. The Board of Trustees. The private investors who funded Vance Holdings.
Jack’s fake smile vanished. He took a step into the aisle. “Olga, that’s enough,” he barked, trying to disguise his panic as fatherly sternness.
Olga ignored him. She placed the thick navy binder on the podium. She unsnapped the clasp. The sound echoed through the microphone.
“In fact,” Olga said, her voice dropping an octave, becoming dead serious. “My brother Blake taught me so much about asset management, I dedicated my entire thesis to him. A thesis on the mechanics of corporate embezzlement.”
The auditorium plunged into a deadly, suffocating silence.
“What the hell is she doing?” Abigail hissed loudly, looking around in horror as people began to stare at them.
“You see,” Olga looked directly at the three investors in the VIP row. “Vance Holdings has been entirely insolvent for three years. The profits reported in your quarterly briefings are fabricated. The funds were diverted through six shell companies registered in Delaware and the Cayman Islands to pay off Blake Vance’s personal gambling debts and luxury assets.”
Chaos erupted in the front rows.
“Turn off her microphone!” Jack screamed, abandoning all pretense, lunging forward toward the stage stairs.
“Mr. Vance, step back!” a campus security guard yelled, rushing down the aisle.
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Olga didn't flinch. She picked up a stack of papers from the binder. “To keep the company afloat, Jack Vance illegally liquidated the private trust of Arthur Vance—my grandfather—stealing two point four million dollars of my inheritance to plug the holes in his fraudulent books.”
👉 What happened when the investors and the police realized Olga had the absolute proof right in her hands?
