Chapter 4 - The Zoom Call
Tuesday.
The heat around the viral video had reached a boiling point of its own.
The hashtag #JusticeForElara was trending number one worldwide on Twitter.
People had screen-recorded the original video before Caleb panicked and made his account private. But the internet is forever. The video was reposted on tens of thousands of accounts.
Internet sleuths had gone to work.
They found Beatrice’s boutique. They found Maya’s brand sponsors.
And they found Caleb’s employer.
Caleb worked as a Senior Marketing Manager for a mid-sized digital media firm called Apex Solutions. He loved putting his title in his bio, loved acting like he was a corporate hotshot.
But corporate hotshots rely on public image.
By Tuesday morning, Apex Solutions’ social media pages were flooded with tens of thousands of comments.
“Why are you employing someone who films and laughs at domestic abuse?”
“Fire Caleb Vance.”
“Boycott Apex until Caleb Vance is gone.”
I was sitting in a plush leather chair in a downtown high-rise, signing the final mountain of paperwork with my legal team, when I received an email from an anonymous source.
It was a recording.
Someone inside Apex Solutions had recorded Caleb’s emergency HR Zoom call and leaked it to Reddit.
I put in my AirPods and clicked play.
There was my brother, sitting in his luxury apartment, looking pale and terrified. His hair was messy. He wasn't wearing his usual smug smile.
On the other side of the screen were his CEO and the Head of HR.
"Caleb," the CEO said, looking furious. "We've had three major clients threaten to pull their contracts this morning alone. Our switchboards are jammed. We are trending on Twitter for harboring an abuser."
"It's a misunderstanding!" Caleb pleaded, his voice cracking. "It was just a family dispute! My sister is crazy, she provoked my mom—"
"You filmed your mother pouring boiling coffee on a woman, laughed, and uploaded it to the internet for views," the HR rep interrupted coldly. "There is no context that makes that acceptable. Furthermore, the victim is now a highly visible public figure."
"She didn't tell us she was rich!" Caleb blurted out.
It was the dumbest thing he could have possibly said.
A heavy, disgusted silence fell over the Zoom call.
"So," the CEO said softly, "if she was still poor, it would have been okay to assault her and humiliate her?"
Caleb stuttered. "No, I—that's not what I meant—"
"You're terminated, Caleb," the CEO said firmly. "Effective immediately. HR will email you the offboarding documents. Do not attempt to log into your company accounts. We are releasing a public statement distancing ourselves from you in five minutes."
"You can't do this! I have a mortgage!"
"You should have thought about that before you did it for TikTok."
The call ended.
I pulled out my AirPods.
I felt a brief, fleeting pang of pity. Not for the man he was today, but for the little brother he used to be, a lifetime ago, before Beatrice twisted him into a narcissist.
May you like
But the pity vanished as a sharp throb from the blister behind my ear reminded me of reality.
One down. Two to go.
