It was a slaughter. He was charged with three counts of wire fraud and one count of embezzlement. His high-priced lawyer, paid for by the last-ditch sale of his one remaining asset—a vintage watch Sarah hadn’t known about—tried to argue he was a pawn, that he was framed by a vengeful wife.
The prosecution, and by proxy, Sarah’s new corporate counsel led by Arthur Vance, simply played the recording of Sarah’s first boardroom meeting. They showed the slide deck, the invoices for the Cartier watch, the lease.
And then they put Chloe Bennett on the stand.
Chloe, no longer in her Records uniform, was composed. She testified that Mark had represented the $250,000 as a legitimate, board-approved signing bonus. She testified that he had told her the apartment was a corporate lease for high-value clients. She was a victim, she claimed, of his lies.
Whether it was true or not didn’t matter. It was believable, and it sealed Mark’s fate. He was found guilty on all counts.
The judge looked at him with disdain. “Mr. Thompson, you were a man who had everything: a high-paying job, a beautiful family. And you squandered it, not out of need, but out of simple, unadulterated greed and arrogance. You stole from your partners, you stole from your wife, and you defrauded your own company. It is the judgment of this court that you be sentenced to eight years in a federal minimum-security correctional institution.”
Eight years. The gavel fell.
Mark, in his ill-fitting, off-the-rack suit, simply crumpled.
Sarah was not in the courtroom. She was, at that exact moment, ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
Omnicorp Solutions, having been restructured, rebranded, and merged with a tech division from Jennings Capital, was relaunching. Its new stock ticker: SJV. The share price tripled in the first hour. She stood on the balcony, confetti raining down, flanked by a triumphant Arthur Vance and her new board. She was the new face of American logistics, a Silicon Valley mind with a Wall Street execution.
A reporter shouted, “Ms. Jennings, your ex-husband was just sentenced. Any comment?”
Sarah didn’t flinch. She smiled brightly for the cameras.
“Omnicorp is, and always has been, focused on the future. We have zero tolerance for the unethical practices of the past. We are thrilled to be moving forward.”
She had, in the end, erased him. The final ledger was settled. Mark Thompson was a federal inmate. Chloe Bennett, having cooperated, was given a severance package and disappeared—likely to find another “Mr. Thompson” in another city. The old executives, David Chen and Maria Gonzalez, faced their own civil lawsuits and were forced to pay back millions, their careers over.
And Sarah Jennings?
She left the NYSE and flew home, not to the cold penthouse, but to the sprawling, warm estate in Kenilworth, where her children were staying with her mother.
She arrived just as the sun was setting. She shed her CEO armor, the sharp suit and the diamond studs, and changed into a soft cashmere sweater. She went upstairs and found her two children, a boy of eight and a girl of six, building a fort out of pillows.
“Mommy!” they screamed, running to her.
She fell to her knees and gathered them in her arms, burying her face in their hair. She held them, breathing in the scent of them for a long, long time. This was the “why.” This was the asset she had been protecting.
“I’m home,” she whispered.
“Did you win your meeting, Mommy?” her son asked.
Sarah Jennings pulled back, a genuine, warm smile finally reaching her eyes—a smile Mark Thompson had not seen in years and would never see again.
“Yes, sweetheart,” she said, kissing his forehead. “Yes, I did. The company is safe now.”
She had cleaned her house. The pest was gone. The ledger was balanced. And for the first time in a decade, Sarah Jennings was finally, completely free. And that is how you settle a score. Mark Thompson thought he was the king, but he forgot he was married to the empress. He built his little castle on her land, and she simply bulldozed it.
This wasn’t just revenge. This was a total corporate and personal reacquisition, a story of underestimation, of hidden power, and of the final, devastating receipt.
