Chapter 4 - THE WRATH OF THE GOLDEN BOY
The morning sun filtered brightly through the massive floor-to-ceiling penthouse windows, casting long, warm golden rays across the plush rugs, but the sunlight did absolutely nothing to melt the block of ice settling heavily in the pit of my stomach as I stared down at my glowing phone.
I had exactly eighty-four missed calls, forty-two frantic text messages, and seven furious voicemails. Almost all of them were from my brother, Nicholas.
I sat at the massive marble kitchen island, wrapped tightly in one of Emmett’s plush, oversized gray robes, a cup of exquisite, freshly brewed espresso warming my cold hands. Emmett had left early for an emergency board meeting, leaving a handwritten, surprisingly tender note on the counter telling me to make myself completely at home and that his security team was downstairs if I needed anything. It was arguably the most luxurious, peaceful morning of my entire life, starkly and violently contrasted by the toxic waste dump that was currently exploding on my phone's lock screen.
Reluctantly, bracing myself for the impact, I pressed play on the first voicemail.
"Jenna, you little bitch." Nicholas’s voice hissed through the tiny speaker, slurred, frantic, and dripping with venomous hatred. "You completely ruined my life. Do you hear me? You ruined everything! The Vanguard Group investors pulled out this morning at 6 AM. They said if Emmett Stewart, the king of the industry, doesn't respect me enough to even sit at my table, they can't trust my leadership or my firm. You set this up. You jealous, pathetic, manipulative loser. You better call me back right now, or I swear to God, I will utterly destroy whatever fake, pathetic little relationship you think you have with Stewart."
I deleted the message immediately, feeling a sickening, twisting mix of profound pity and absolute, undeniable rage. Nicholas had built his entire career on a fragile house of cards, relying entirely on name-dropping, inflated vanity metrics, and hyper-aggressive networking. Emmett hadn't destroyed him; Emmett had merely turned on the stadium lights, revealing the vast, echoing emptiness of Nicholas's operation.
Around noon, just as I was finishing reviewing the incredibly generous VP contract Emmett had left me, my phone rang again. This time, the caller ID showed the front desk of my own modest apartment building across town.
"Miss Jenna? I'm so sorry to bother you," Carlos, the usually cheerful doorman, said, his voice tight with nerves. "But your brother is here. He's making a massive, violent scene in the lobby, screaming and demanding we let him up to your unit. He says it’s an absolute life-or-death emergency."
"Do not let him up, Carlos. I'm not even in the building," I said firmly, my heart rate spiking dangerously. "Call the police immediately if he refuses to leave the premises."
But the call ended abruptly with a click before Carlos could respond. Ten minutes later, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown, burner number. It was a photograph. A high-resolution photo of my personal laptop, sitting exactly where I left it on my worn-out living room coffee table, surrounded by my highly confidential, physical client files. Nicholas had somehow bypassed the doorman—probably bribed someone—and violently broken into my apartment.
The text beneath the chilling photo read:
Did you know it’s a federal crime and grounds for a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit to break a corporate NDA? I have all your physical hard drives. I have the unredacted client lists. I know exactly who you write for. Unless you get your new boyfriend Emmett to publicly apologize to me on video and fully endorse my merger by 5:00 PM today, I’m leaking everything to the Wall Street Journal. You’ll be sued into utter oblivion. You’ll both go to federal prison.
Panic, freezing cold and razor-sharp, violently seized my chest. My breath caught. My client list was the literal holy grail of corporate secrets. If Nicholas leaked the undeniable proof that I had ghostwritten the impassioned speeches, personal memoirs, and critical crisis management statements for the most powerful, ego-driven CEOs in the country, the stock market would riot. It would ruin dozens of major companies. It would cause massive shareholder panic.
And worst of all, it would completely ruin Emmett.
I closed my eyes. I took a deep, shuddering breath. I didn't cry. I didn't collapse. For the first time in my thirty years of existence, the quiet, subservient, easily intimidated Jenna died permanently. In her place, a cold, calculating, incredibly dangerous strategist was born. I had spent years writing elite crisis management protocols for billionaires facing total ruin. It was finally time I wrote my own.
I quickly dressed in the sleek, flawlessly tailored charcoal suit I had asked Emmett's very efficient assistant to procure for me that morning. I grabbed the heavy leather-bound contract Emmett had given me, clicked a pen, and signed my name boldly, aggressively on the dotted line. I shoved it into my bag and headed straight for the private elevator.
When I arrived at the towering glass fortress of the Stewart Global headquarters, the elite security team had already been briefed to let me straight up to the executive floor. I bypassed the protesting secretaries and stormed directly into Emmett’s massive glass-walled office, violently interrupting a high-level meeting with his Chief Financial Officer.
Emmett took one single look at the murderous expression on my face and immediately dismissed the executive with a flick of his wrist. "What happened?" he asked, his voice tight, rushing over to me.
I slammed my phone down onto his pristine glass desk, pulling up the extortion text. "My brother broke into my apartment. He stole my physical backup hard drives. The ones with the unencrypted, raw drafts of every single speech I've ever written for every CEO in this city. He’s threatening to release them to the press unless you endorse his failing company by five o'clock."
Emmett’s eyes darkened instantly, a terrifying, violent storm brewing in his grey irises. The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "He just made the single biggest, most fatal mistake of his miserable life." He reached aggressively for his desk phone. "I'll have my private security contractors physically extract him. We'll get the federal authorities involved. Extortion is a major felony."
"No," I said sharply, my hand shooting out to slam the phone back into its receiver, surprising both of us with the sheer, unadulterated authority in my voice. "If we call the police, it becomes public record. The mere rumor of a massive client list leak will cause panic on the trading floor. We cannot fight this idiot with brute force. We have to outmaneuver him entirely."
Emmett paused, his hand hovering over the phone. He looked up at me, a slow, deeply admiring, almost predatory smirk spreading across his handsome face. "You have a plan."
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"I always have a plan," I replied coldly, pulling my signed VP contract out of my bag and sliding it smoothly across his desk. "But first, make it official. If I'm going to absolute, scorched-earth war with my brother, I need the full, unmitigated weight of Stewart Global standing behind me."
Emmett didn't hesitate for a microsecond. He grabbed his pen and signed the countersignature with a flourish, his eyes locking onto mine with fierce, burning pride. "Welcome aboard, Madam Vice President. Now, tell me exactly how we are going to destroy him."
