Her hair, no longer a messy honey-blonde bun, was a sleek, sophisticated ash-blonde bob that grazed her jawline. She wore a bespoke navy blue power suit that looked more armored than tailored, with a simple white silk shell underneath. No jewelry, save for a pair of severe diamond studs and her wedding ring.
Her face—it was Sarah’s face, but all the softness was gone. The vague, distracted look was replaced by a gaze as sharp and cold as the view from the window. She wasn’t pale; her makeup was immaculate, professional. She looked formidable.
Mark’s mind scrambled, trying to make sense of the data. It’s Sarah, but it’s not. It’s a mistake. She’s here for the fundraiser. She walked into the wrong room. She’s lost.
He opened his mouth, a confused, pitying “Oh” forming on his lips. But before he could speak, one of the lawyers stepped forward.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the board, thank you for your time. Please be seated.”
They all sat stiffly. Mark half-fell into his chair, his eyes locked on his wife, who was walking—no, striding—to the head of the table.
Chloe leaned in, her voice a tiny, confused whisper. “Mark, isn’t that…?”
Mark couldn’t answer. His throat had closed. The blood was roaring in his ears, a sound like the ocean.
The woman reached the head of the table. She placed a slim silver laptop down and surveyed the room. Her gaze swept past David Chen, past Maria Gonzalez, past the other terrified VPs. Then her eyes landed on Mark.
They paused for a single, excruciating second. There was no recognition, no anger, no betrayal. There was nothing. It was the look a CEO gives a piece of furniture.
Then her eyes slid to Chloe. To the red dress. To the hand Chloe had protectively placed on Mark’s arm. For a fraction of a second, the corner of the woman’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile. It was the precursor to one.
The lawyer spoke again. “It is my distinct honor to introduce you to the sole proprietor of SJ Ventures, the new Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer of Omnicorp Solutions, Ms. Sarah Jennings.”
The name hit Mark like a physical blow. Jennings. Her maiden name. SJ Ventures. Sarah Jennings.
The room was filled with a stunned, shocked silence. David Chen’s jaw was literally open. Maria Gonzalez looked like she’d been slapped. And Mark… Mark Thompson just stared.
Sarah—Ms. Jennings—smiled a bright, cold, reptilian smile.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said, her voice clear and strong, bearing no trace of the quiet murmur he’d heard just three hours ago. “I apologize for the abrupt nature of this transition. It was necessary. Now, let’s get to work. I’ve reviewed the Q4 projections and, frankly, I am appalled.”
Her eyes found Mark’s again, and this time they held. “Especially in our Global Sales Division.”
The world in Mark Thompson’s head had shrunk to a single, pulsing pinpoint of sound: the click of Sarah’s heels. The air in the boardroom, once chilled to a perfect sixty-eight degrees, now felt suffocating. He couldn’t draw a proper breath. His Brioni suit, his five-thousand-dollar armor, felt like a wool-blend coffin.
“Mark,” Chloe whispered again, her voice no longer purring. It was sharp, laced with the first needle-prick of panic. “Mark, what is going on? That’s your wife.”
“Shut up,” Mark hissed, his voice cracking.
He was staring at Sarah, but the woman at the head of the table was a stranger. This was not the woman who organized charity galas. This was not the woman who fretted over guest lists and gluten-free options. This was not the woman who wore yoga pants and asked his permission to move money.
This woman, Ms. Jennings, was plugging her laptop into the mainframe. The massive screen at the end of the boardroom, usually dark, flickered to life. It didn’t show a welcome message. It showed a complex, terrifyingly detailed spreadsheet.
“Let’s begin with the obvious,” Sarah said, her voice cutting through the stunned silence. “Omnicorp is a bloated, inefficient relic. For three years, it has been systematically mismanaged, over-leveraged, and in some cases, actively defrauded.”
She clicked a button. A new slide appeared: a line graph. A thick red line representing expenses was rocketing upwards, while a blue line, net revenue, was stagnating.
“The numbers you’ve been reporting to the shareholders were fiction,” she stated. “A very creative, very illegal fiction.”
David Chen, the CFO, finally found his voice. “Now see here, Ms. Jennings, our books are audited by Grant Thornton…”
“Yes, I know,” Sarah said, not even looking at him. “I also know that your primary auditor, Mr. Stephen Hadley, is your brother-in-law. A fact you failed to disclose.”
David went the color of old parchment.
“And you, Ms. Gonzalez,” Sarah continued, turning to the COO. “Your logistics department is still using a dispatch system from 2005. You’ve been outsourcing thirty percent of our domestic freight to a company, LogiFast Solutions, which, it turns out, is owned by your son—at a forty percent markup from market rate.”
Maria Gonzalez recoiled, her face a mask of fury and shock.
This was not a meeting; it was an execution. Sarah was dismantling them, piece by piece, with cold, brutal precision. She had the documents, she had the wire transfer records, she had the shell company ownership papers. She had everything.
Mark sat frozen. This wasn’t possible. The discrepancies she’d mentioned this morning, the Zurich statements, Arthur Vance—it wasn’t a mistake. It was research. She hadn’t been flustered; she’d been preparing.
His mind flashed back—a rapid, horrific slideshow. Her on her laptop late at night; he’d assumed it was Pinterest. Those long spa days. The charity luncheon in New York. The trip to see her sister in Seattle last month.
He realized with a dawning, bowel-twisting horror that she hadn’t been seeing her sister. Seattle was the home of Amazon and Microsoft. She had been meeting with logistics and software experts. She’d been building her case.
And the money? The “respectable inheritance” from her father? Mark had always assumed it was a few million tied up in trusts, enough to fund her hobbies. He had been wrong. He had been so, so very wrong.
Robert Jennings hadn’t been a minor tech mogul; he had been a silent one. He’d been one of the original angel investors in a little search engine company in the late 90s. Mark had married one of the wealthiest women in the country, and he had treated her like a mildly incompetent intern.
“And now,” Sarah said, her voice dropping, “we come to the star of the company: the Global Sales Division.”
The screen changed. It was a picture of Mark smiling at a golf tournament. Then a new slide—a list of expenses.
“Mr. Mark Thompson,” Sarah said. It was the first time she had used his name. It sounded alien. “You, Mr. Thompson, are a fascinating case. Your sales numbers are impressive. Almost too impressive.”
She clicked.
“Let’s look at the Omega Account, your biggest client. They accounted for twenty percent of all new revenue last quarter. But the Omega Account doesn’t seem to exist. The address is a P.O. Box in the Cayman Islands. And the ten million dollar retainer they paid us last month? Our new audit traces it back.”
She clicked again. A complicated flowchart appeared. The money had been routed from a bank in Zurich—her bank.
“You’ve been cooking the books,” she said, her voice a soft, dangerous whisper. “You’ve been inflating your own sales numbers by moving my money into the company accounts, disguised as client payments. All to make yourself look like a rainmaker. All to justify…”
She clicked one last time. The screen filled with invoices. Invoices for a lease on an apartment in Streeterville. Receipts from Cartier for a Panthère watch. Travel expenses for two, first class to Paris, for a sales conference that never existed.
“And finally, a corporate payroll entry,” Sarah said, her voice dripping ice. “For a Ms. Chloe Bennett. Position: Special Liaison. Salary: $250,000. Approved by…” She zoomed in on the signature. “Mark Thompson.”
Chloe made a small, strangled sound. She was staring at the screen, her face ashen. She wasn’t just the mistress; she was evidence. She was Exhibit A in his career-ending fraud.
“Mark,” Chloe’s voice was trembling. “You told me that was a signing bonus. You told me the company approved it.”
Mark couldn’t speak. He was vibrating. The predator had become the prey. The lion’s den was, in fact, an abattoir, and he was the one on the hook.
Sarah—Ms. Jennings—closed her laptop. The screen went black. She walked slowly from the head of the table, her heels echoing in the tomb-like silence. She stopped right behind Mark. He could smell her perfume. It wasn’t the light, floral scent she used to wear. This was something dark, expensive, and smoky, like sandalwood and ash.
She leaned down, her mouth close to his ear. The rest of the room, the other executives, faded away. It was just them.
“You thought I was stupid,” she whispered, her voice so low only he could hear it. “You thought I was a hobby. You thought I was décor. You thought I was just the wife.”
He shuddered, a full-body tremor.
“You,” she continued, her breath warm on his ear, “were a project, Mark. A project I was running to see how much incompetence and betrayal I could tolerate. Turns out, my tolerance has a limit.”
She straightened up, addressing the room again, her voice back to its steel-trap crispness.
“David, Maria. You’re fired. Your breach of fiduciary duty is profound. Security will escort you from the building. Your things will be mailed to you. If you contest this, I will file criminal charges. Am I clear?”
David and Maria, utterly broken, just nodded. Security guards who had been waiting outside the door entered and flanked them.
“The rest of you,” Sarah said, “are on probation. You will report to my new COO, Mr. Arthur Vance, who will be here this afternoon.”
Arthur Vance. The old, dusty lawyer. Her consigliere.
Sarah walked back to the head of the table. She looked at Chloe, who looked like a terrified child in a very expensive, very red dress.
“Ms. Bennett,” Sarah said. “Your position here is redundant, as is your presence. Security.”
One of the guards turned to Chloe. “Ma’am, please come with me.”
