Chapter 15 - The Counter-Attack
At 8:30 AM on Saturday, my private office door flew open without a knock. My administrative assistant, a sharp young man named Leo, stood in the doorway holding a thick manila folder, his expression grim.
"Ms. Reynolds, you have a visitor in the lobby. Well, more like an ambush," Leo said, dropping the folder onto my desk. "And you’re going to want to look at these legal filings first."
I opened the folder. Inside were preliminary injunction documents filed by a low-rent attorney named Henderson, acting on behalf of Robert and Eleanor Reynolds—my parents. They were suing me for 'alienation of affection, emotional distress, and financial abandonment of elderly dependents.'
I let out a cold, humorless chuckle. "Elderly dependents? My father still plays golf three times a week and my mother just bought a designer handbag last month."
"They’re throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks," Leo warned. "And the receptionist downstairs says your mother is staging a one-woman sit-in by the elevator banks, crying to anyone who will listen about how her ungrateful daughter left her on the streets."
"Call building security," I said calmly, signing a digital contract on my screen. "Have her removed for trespassing and disturbing the peace. And forward Henderson’s contact information to Vanguard’s legal department."
Leo blinked. "Vanguard legal? For a family dispute?"
"It’s not a family dispute, Leo. It’s corporate harassment. They’re using litigation to interfere with a publicly traded financial institution's employee. Let our corporate lawyers eat that ambulance-chaser alive."
By noon, the sit-in was over. Building security had escorted my mother out the revolving doors while she screamed obscenities that shattered her fragile socialite facade once and for all. But the war had escalated from a family feud into an all-out public relations nightmare—exactly what my parents thought would force me to settle out of court and bail them out.
They miscalculated. They didn't understand the digital age, and they certainly didn't understand Vanguard’s zero-tolerance policy for public scandals.
May you like
By Monday morning, an investigative piece was published in the *Financial Chronicle*, not about me, but about Vance & Hawthorne Development’s shady financial practices, hidden debts, and the desperate attempt of a failing real estate firm to blackmail a Vanguard executive through familial ties. The article featured public court records of my parents selling my condo, complete with the forged signatures and the wedding registry receipts.
The internet, as it often does, smelled blood in the water.
