Chapter 16 - THE CLEANUP
By noon, the news had gone completely viral.
Every major financial news outlet—Bloomberg, CNBC, Wall Street Journal—was running the headline:
***MERIDIAN GLOBAL COO ARRESTED IN MASSIVE FED-CLEARING CONSPIRACY; VOSS FINTECH EXPOSES BILLION-DOLLAR FRAUD.***
Social media was in an absolute frenzy. Someone at Lila’s wedding had secretly recorded Elias firing her at the head table and uploaded it to TikTok. By midday, the video had amassed over twenty million views under the hashtag *#BaristaBossSister.*
I sat in Elias’s private executive office on the sixty-eighth floor, watching the ticker scroll across the TV on the wall. A mug of hot chamomile tea was cradled in my hands.
A soft knock came at the heavy mahogany door.
"Come in," I said.
The door opened, and my father walked in.
Richard Vance looked like he had aged twenty years in twenty-four hours. His jacket was wrinkled, his hair disheveled, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He stopped just inside the doorway, clutching his faded baseball cap in his hands like a penitent beggar.
"Maya," he choked out.
I set my mug down on the glass coffee table. I didn't stand up. "Dad."
"They... they took Lila to the federal detention facility in Brooklyn," he said, his voice cracking. "The judge denied bail. They’re saying she’s facing ten to fifteen years, Maya. Ten to fifteen years in federal prison."
"She committed grand larceny and corporate espionage, Dad," I replied, keeping my voice flat. "Those carry consequences."
"She’s your sister," he pleaded, taking a hesitant step forward. "She made a mistake. A terrible, stupid mistake. But if you talk to the prosecutors... Elias Voss has influence. If you tell them it was all a family misunderstanding, that you gave her permission to use the code—"
"A family misunderstanding?" A sharp, incredulous laugh escaped my throat. "She conspired with the man who murdered Dr. Bennett! She sold stolen encryption keys! She tried to send *me* to prison, Dad! Mom threatened to lie to the feds to protect her!"
Dad winced, looking down at his worn shoes. "Your mother was just upset. She didn't mean it—"
"Stop lying to yourself!" I stood up, my voice cutting through the room with the force of a whip. "Mom meant every single word. And so did you, when you sat on that couch and told me to just 'let her have this one.' You watched her rob me my entire life, and you never once stood up for me."
"I was trying to keep the peace!" he yelled, tears suddenly spilling down his weathered cheeks. "I was trying to keep this family together!"
"There is no family, Dad," I said, the truth settling with finality in the air between us. "There was just Lila’s demands, and you and Mom sacrificing me on her altar. Well, the altar is broken."
"Maya..."
"The house in Long Island is being foreclosed on next month," I told him calmly. "I called the bank this morning. I canceled the auto-draft from my secondary account that was paying your mortgage."
Dad’s face went completely pale. "You... you canceled the payments? Maya, we’ll be homeless!"
May you like
"You have two hands, Dad. You have a pension buy-back option you refused to take five years ago because you wanted to play golf. Get a job. Pull espresso shots for minimum wage. Like I did."
***
