Chapter 6 - THE ASHES OF A FRAUDULENT EMPIRE
By Tuesday afternoon, the corporate dissolution of Nexus Technologies was no longer a private boardroom secret; it was breaking news across TechCrunch, Bloomberg, and the financial columns of the San Francisco Chronicle.
The headline read: Napa Valley Wedding Canceled at Altar After Bride—Ex-Vesta Capital Partner—Triggers Bankruptcy Liquidation of Groom's Tech Startup.
Social media went into a feeding frenzy. Within six hours of the article dropping, #NapaRunawayGroom and #VestaHoldings were trending nationwide on X. Internet sleuths, fueled by leaked photos from the wedding courtyard and disgruntled former employees who had been let go without severance, dug into the company's past.
Memes circulated of Savannah standing in my ivory silk dress in the bridal suite, her left hand awkwardly swollen around my grandmother’s diamond ring—which she had ultimately been forced to have a local Napa jeweler cut off her finger with a pair of medical shears on Sunday night.
I sat in my home office in Pacific Heights, watching the rain tap against the windowpane with a cup of Earl Grey tea in my hand. My phone buzzed continuously on the oak desk—texts from college friends, old colleagues from Horizon Capital, and reporters offering six figures for an exclusive interview. I ignored them all, setting the phone to 'Do Not Disturb.'
My father called around four o'clock.
"I'm looking at the Bloomberg terminal, kiddo," my dad said, his voice carrying that dry, gravelly Boston warmth that always grounded me. "Did you really have to ruin his life quite so efficiently on a Saturday afternoon?"
"I didn't ruin his life, Dad," I replied, smiling slightly as I watched a CNN segment flash a picture of Ethan looking bewildered outside his SoMa office building as bailiffs changed the locks. "I just stopped subsidizing his fiction."
"Fair enough," my dad chuckled. "Your mother wants to know if you want to fly out to Boston for a few weeks. Clear your head. Eat some real clam chowder."
"Tell Mom I'd love to," I said. "Just give me a couple of days to wrap up the Vesta asset transfer. The server patents are being reassigned to our portfolio R&D fund tomorrow morning."
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"Sounds like you're back in the institutional game, Claire."
"Not quite, Dad," I said, looking out over the San Francisco skyline where the fog was finally breaking to reveal the bright, sharp blue of the bay. "I'm just making sure the numbers finally add up."
