Chapter 3 - The Boardroom Storm
By 8:00 AM the following morning, the video of Ethan Blackwood kissing his mistress while his pregnant wife watched from the crowd had amassed over forty million views across social media platforms. News anchors openly mocked the CEO's hypocrisy, but the real disaster was unfolding on Wall Street.
Inside the glass-walled headquarters of Northstar Vertex, Ethan was pacing frantically across his office, yelling into his headset.
“Buy it back! I don't care what it costs, stabilize the shares!” he screamed.
The door flew open. His CFO, Marcus Vance, walked in without knocking, his face gray with exhaustion.
“It’s not just retail panic selling, Ethan,” Marcus said, dropping a thick stack of financial printouts onto the desk. “Someone is dumping institutional blocks. Massive ones. We’ve lost eighteen percent of our market cap in forty-five minutes.”
Ethan stared at the numbers. “Who is dumping? Is it the hedge funds?”
“It’s the Beaumont Strategic Trust,” Marcus revealed quietly. “Ethan... I spent the last three hours auditing our early debt structures. I didn't realize it because the funds were routed through shell entities, but thirty-four percent of our expansion credit was personally backed by Charles Beaumont’s firm.”
Ethan felt the air leave his lungs. “What are you saying?”
“They’re pulling the credit guarantees,” Marcus said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Without those guarantees, the banks are calling in our primary loans for the Helix launch. We have until Friday to produce two hundred million dollars in liquid collateral, or Northstar goes into default.”
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Ethan sank into his leather chair, his hands trembling. He pulled up his personal messaging app to text Claire, but his message bounced back immediately.
She had blocked his number, changed her location settings, and cut him off completely.
