Chapter 1

“I propose we fire Caroline. Immediately.”

Lia’s voice cut through the quarterly board meeting like a shockwave.

I looked at the junior assistant, just three months out of college. She stood at the front of the conference room, gripping a remote, a look of ruthless triumph on her young face.

Two dozen pairs of eyes snapped to me.

“Lia, what are you talking about?” I set down my coffee cup, frowning. What game was this girl playing?

She clicked the remote.

The big screen flashed, displaying my attendance records and expense reports for all to see.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please look at the hard evidence.” Lia’s voice trembled with a giddy, nervous excitement. “For the past three months, Caroline has been absent from the office for over twenty hours a week.”

Another click. Photos of me at various upscale locations appeared.

A spa. A golf course. A three-star Michelin restaurant.

“And here is a record of her squandering company funds.” Lia tossed a stack of papers onto the table. “Le Bernardin, an eight-thousand-dollar dinner. The Mandarin Oriental Spa, thirty-five hundred. And this golf club, where every visit costs over five figures.”

The room was dead silent.

It was laughable. She had no idea that my so-called "absences" were spent leveraging my family's three-generation network to woo billionaire investors for this tiny company.

Behind those outrageously expensive bills were investment deals and partnership agreements worth tens of millions of dollars.

And everyone in this room knew it.

“A total of one hundred fifty thousand dollars in improper reimbursements.” Lia’s PowerPoint reached its final slide. “I strongly urge the CEO to fire her immediately to save the company’s cash flow.”

“Only by doing this can we demonstrate our company’s strict adherence to the rules. No one will dare to break them again!”

I scanned the faces around the table. The executives I’d done countless favors for were now intensely studying their own fingernails.

David, the CFO, who had personally seen me use my Michelin-star restaurant membership, pretended to be organizing a stack of financial reports.

Mark, the Marketing Director, who had borrowed a hundred thousand dollars from me last month for a “family emergency,” was now staring down at the table in silence.

Even Sarah, whom I had promoted from junior manager to Marketing Director, was giving me a look of condemnation.

My gaze settled on Claude, my Ivy League classmate, the CEO of this company.

Three years ago, he had come to me with a half-baked PowerPoint and a dream to “change the world with technology.”

I didn’t just give him his seed money; I used my private memberships to get discounts for all of the company’s schmoozing events.

He knew the truth.

He knew the value behind every “absence.” He knew what those bills had bought us.

They secured three funding rounds of Series A, totaling $45 million, with an upcoming Series B of $80 million.

Claude slowly looked up, his eyes devoid of any guilt.

Instead, they held a detached, almost condescending judgment.

“Caroline,” his voice was all business, “what do you have to say about the absences and expenses Lia has presented?”