Chapter 3 - The True Fortune
The following Monday morning, I didn't wake up crying. I woke up angry, focused, and ready to work.
What the Crofts didn't understand—what they had been too arrogant to ever ask about—was exactly what I did for a living. Julian thought I was a mid-level project manager at a tech firm. He liked it that way. It made him feel superior with his "Vice President of Acquisitions" title at a legacy finance company.
He didn't know that the tech firm, NovaCore Solutions, was a company I had founded in my dorm room. He didn't know that my "project management" role was a cover I used in social settings to avoid the exhausting conversations that came with being a twenty-eight-year-old self-made millionaire.
I sat at the massive oak desk in my corner office overlooking the city skyline. My lawyer, David, sat across from me, reviewing the financial documents I had pulled over the weekend.
“It’s worse than you thought, Maya,” David said, adjusting his glasses. “The Croft family estate is mortgaged to the hilt. Julian’s trust fund was drained three years ago. The transfers he made from your joint account were the only things keeping the lights on at his mother’s country club.”
“Can we recover the stolen funds?” I asked, sipping my black coffee.
“Easily,” David nodded. “It’s textbook wire fraud. But there’s something else. Julian’s employer, Sterling & Vanguard, is currently undergoing a hostile takeover.”
I raised an eyebrow. “By whom?”
David slid a glossy folder across my desk and smiled. “By Apex Holdings. Which, as you know, is the parent company NovaCore just acquired a majority stake in last Thursday.”
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I stared at the folder. A slow, dangerous smile spread across my face. Julian had spent a year making me feel small, making my family feel insignificant. He had treated me like a bank and my parents like peasants.
“David,” I said, closing the folder. “Draft the lawsuit for the embezzled funds. And then, call the board of Apex Holdings. Tell them the new majority shareholder wants to pay a personal visit to Sterling & Vanguard tomorrow morning.”
