Chapter 7 - The Aftermath
The following three months moved with the speed of an avalanche.
The story of the wedding that never happened became the hottest piece of gossip across the Chicago financial district. But because I had taken control of the narrative from the very first minute, I was never painted as the heartbroken victim.
In the boardrooms and trading floors of LaSalle Street, I was known simply as the analyst who dismantled a corporate grifter in front of his own CEO.
My firm promoted me to Senior Portfolio Director in November.
Not because of my father’s influence, but because the sixty-page forensic risk assessment I had quietly built on Marcus’s personal dealings over the previous six months was so thorough that the SEC used it as the foundational blueprint for their entire indictment.
Marcus’s world collapsed with terrifying speed.
The thirty-two-thousand-dollar margin debt was called in by his brokers within forty-eight hours of his termination. Without his salary, his bonuses, or the Vance-Crest credit lines he had promised his creditors, his accounts were liquidated one by one.
His leased Porsche was repossessed from the driveway of his apartment building in Lincoln Park on a rainy Tuesday morning.
Two weeks later, the landlord served him with an eviction notice for non-payment of rent.
As for Beatrice, the public humiliation was absolute.
The suburban country club where she had bragged for months about her son’s impending marriage to a ‘finance heiress’ quietly revoked her social membership after the details of her extortion attempt leaked through the guest network.
Her bridge group stopped inviting her. Her sister in Ohio refused to take her calls, furious that she had been dragged into a public scandal that made the local newspapers.
One afternoon in early January, as the first heavy blizzard of the season blanketed the city in white powder, my phone buzzed on my mahogany desk.
It was an unknown number from a local area code.
I hesitated for a second, then answered.
“Valeria?”
The voice was thin, raspy, and broken, sounding like someone speaking from the bottom of an abandoned dry well.
It was Marcus.
I didn't hang up. I leaned back in my ergonomic leather chair, looking out through the floor-to-ceiling glass over the frozen expanse of the Chicago River.
“Yes, Marcus,” I said, keeping my tone as neutral as a balance sheet.
A ragged, choking sob came through the receiver.
“Valeria… please,” Marcus wept, his pride completely shattered into dust. “I’m calling from a payphone near the bus terminal. I don't have anywhere to go. The bank took the car. The apartment is locked. My mother won’t even let me stay on her sofa because she blames me for losing the social club.”
May you like
He paused, his breath coming in wheezing gasps against the receiver.
“I have forty dollars left to my name, Valeria,” he begged. “Just help me get a hotel room for a few days. Just lend me five thousand dollars so I can retain an attorney for the SEC hearing. I’ll sign whatever you want. I’ll pay you back double once I find consulting work. Please… remember who we were.”
