Chapter 5
The Desperate Counterattack.A week after the boardroom coup, the dust had begun to settle, but the legal warfare was entering its most toxic phase. Elliot had realized that he couldn't fight me in the corporate arena, so he did what every desperate, cornered animal does: he tried to get dirty.
I was sitting in the study of my family’s Westport estate, a glass of red wine resting beside a mountain of legal briefs, when Eleanor called.
"Victoria, Elliot has hired a new attorney," she said without greeting. "Arthur Sloane."
I frowned. Arthur Sloane was a notorious tabloid lawyer, a man who didn't win cases in the courtroom but rather in the court of public opinion. He specialized in high-profile divorces, using smear campaigns to force wealthy spouses into quick, massive settlements just to make the noise stop.
"What’s his angle?" I asked, taking a slow sip of the wine.
"He’s filing a countersuit alleging corporate coercion and emotional abuse. He’s claiming that you manipulated the financial records to frame Elliot, and that you used your family's influence to isolate him and destroy his career. They’re threatening to go to the press with a narrative that paints you as a cold, calculating heiress who used a self-made man to build her tech empire and then threw him away when she was bored."
I let out a soft laugh. "A self-made man? Elliot couldn't assemble an Ikea desk without a YouTube tutorial. Let him try."
"It’s not about the truth, Victoria, it’s about the optics," Eleanor warned. "Sloane has already leaked a blind item to Page Six. They’re hinting at a major tech scandal involving an abusive spouse. If they file this publicly, it will delay the divorce and tie up your assets in a lengthy discovery process. They want a settlement. Elliot is asking for fifty million dollars and a retention of his shares."
"Fifty million?" I scoffed. "He’s bolder than I thought. Where is he getting the money to pay Sloane?"
"That’s the interesting part," Eleanor said, her voice dropping. "Our financial tracking shows a recent large deposit into Elliot’s newly opened offshore account. It didn't come from his frozen assets. It came from a private equity firm called Blackwood Holdings."
My fingers tightened around the stem of my wine glass. "Blackwood Holdings? That’s managed by Charles Vance. Elliot’s estranged uncle."
"The very same. It seems Elliot went groveling to the family he spent years pretending didn't exist. Charles Vance has been trying to get a foothold in the tech sector for a decade. He’s funding Elliot’s legal team in exchange for a promise of a piece of Vanguard Technologies if Elliot wins his shares back."
"They're playing a dangerous game," I murmured, my mind already spinning out the counter-strategy. "They think they can bully me into a settlement because they think I fear exposure. They forget that I don't care what strangers think of me."
"So, what do you want to do?"
"Hold the line, Eleanor. Do not respond to Sloane’s letters. Let them file the suit. Let them think they have us on the defensive. In the meantime, I want a full asset check on Blackwood Holdings. Every investment, every regulatory filing, every secret they think they buried. If Charles Vance wants to fund my husband's betrayal, he can pay for the funeral of his own firm."
The next morning, the media circus began.
As I left my apartment building in Boston to head to the office, a swarm of paparazzi and reporters materialized from behind the concrete pillars. Flashbulbs blinded me as I walked toward my waiting SUV, flanked by Arthur and two other security guards.
"Victoria! Is it true you framed your husband for corporate fraud?" a reporter screamed, thrusting a microphone toward my face.
"Victoria, did you force Elliot out of his own company because of an affair?" another yelled.
I kept my face entirely expressionless, my dark sunglasses hiding any hint of annoyance. I didn't accelerate my pace; I walked with the deliberate, calm cadence of someone who was completely untouchable. Arthur opened the car door, and I slipped inside, the heavy door shutting out the chaotic noise of the street.
"They're getting desperate, ma'am," Arthur noted from the front seat as he pulled away from the curb.
"Desperation is noisy, Arthur. Strength is quiet," I replied, looking down at my tablet.
Marcus had just sent over the preliminary file on Blackwood Holdings. As I scrolled through the financial data, a small, dark smile crept onto my face. Charles Vance wasn't the brilliant financier he pretended to be. His firm was heavily leveraged, relying on short-term high-interest loans to maintain its appearance of stability. More importantly, they were currently undergoing a confidential compliance review by the SEC for insider trading.
I picked up my phone and made a call to a contact I hadn't spoken to in two years—a senior editor at the Wall Street Journal.
May you like
"Hi, Julian," I said smoothly when he answered. "I have a tip for you. It involves Blackwood Holdings, an upcoming SEC filing, and a very messy tech divorce. I can provide the bank statements and the email correspondence by this afternoon."
If Elliot wanted to use the press as a weapon, he was about to learn that I didn't just use the press; I owned the narrative. By the time I arrived at the Vanguard headquarters, the counter-trap was already set. Elliot and his uncle thought they were cornering a wounded heiress. They had no idea they were walking into a meat grinder.
