90 “My sister threw acid in my face at her wedding—then my mother scrubbed the burns because cameras kept rolling.” As my skin blistered before 250 guests, Fallon smiled and called it a joke. Police later confirmed the glass held a corrosive chemical peel. She wanted content. What she filmed instead became evidence—and I knew how to destroy her....

Two weeks after the arrests, the criminal case against Fallon and Sibil moved into the pre-trial discovery phase.

I sat in the office of my primary civil attorney, Arthur Vance—no relation to Miles or Marcus—a grey-haired, sharp-eyed trial lawyer who spent thirty years shredding corporate defendants in high-stakes personal injury litigation.

Greer sat beside me, flipping through a red binder containing bank records that Sutton had provided under a formal third-party subpoena.

"The criminal court judge set Fallon’s bail at $250,000," Arthur said, sliding a document across his glass desk. "Miles refused to post it. Sibil tried to put up her Scarsdale house, but because the bank initiated foreclosure proceedings on Monday due to the trust default, the court rejected the property as collateral."

"So where is Fallon?" I asked.

"Rikers Island," Arthur said flatly. "She’s been in female protective custody for eleven days because she couldn't raise the 10% bond cash."

I felt no rush of malice. No burst of triumph. Just the clean, cold satisfaction of a balanced ledger.

"What about Sibil?"

"Sibil managed to post her $50,000 bond using her emerald jewelry collection," Arthur replied. "She's staying at a cheap extended-stay motel near White Plains. Her social circle has completely severed contact. None of her friends will return her calls."

Greer looked up from her binder, her eyebrows pulled down in confusion. "Sloan... look at these bank statements from Ward Creative Media LLC from six months ago."

I leaned over the desk. "What did you find?"

Greer pointed her finger at a series of recurring wire transfers originating from a private account in the Cayman Islands, totaling $1.1 million, deposited directly into Fallon’s corporate account over an eight-month period.

"Fallon wasn't just making money from brand deals and YouTube ads," Greer murmured, pointing at the transaction codes. "These transfers aren't labeled as sponsorship fees. They're labeled as 'Consulting Retainers — Project Apex.'"

Arthur Vance leaned forward, his legal instincts instantly sharper. "Project Apex? Vanguard-Apex?"

I grabbed the binder, my eyes scanning the Swift routing numbers.

My heart rate jumped ten beats per minute.

The account number originating those $1.1 million wire transfers was the exact same offshore account number used by Richard Sterling—my Managing Director—to handle confidential corporate restructuring payments for Vanguard-Apex’s institutional clients.

I sat back in my chair, my mind racing through probability trees at lightning speed.

This wasn't just a sisterly assault for social media clout.

Fallon hadn't just target-selected me at her wedding to get a viral thumbnail.

She had been paid $1.1 million over eight months by someone connected to my own corporate department.

"Arthur," I said, my voice dropping into a razor-thin whisper. "Run a forensic cross-reference on those wire deposit dates against my internal work log at Vanguard-Apex."

Arthur pulled up my employment file on his terminal, matching the dates.

Every single deposit into Fallon’s account occurred within forty-eight hours after I had flagged major financial irregularities in the Reynolds Acquisition portfolio.

"They weren't trying to create a viral video," Greer gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. "Sloan... they were trying to destroy your credibility so you couldn't testify as an internal whistleblower on the Reynolds deal!"

The full picture assembled itself in my mind with frightening, crystalline clarity.

Richard Sterling had discovered three months ago that I was getting close to discovering an $80 million accounting fraud embedded inside the Reynolds Acquisition. He couldn't fire me directly without triggering federal whistleblower protections.

So he went to Marcus Vance. Marcus went to his nephew Miles. Miles used Fallon.

They offered Fallon $1.1 million under the guise of an "offshore media investment" to orchestrate a public, violent breakdown that would make me look mentally unstable, volatile, and unfit to manage corporate risk analysis.

The chemical peel wasn't a reckless prank that went wrong.

It was an engineered character assassination designed to discredit a federal witness before an $80 million fraud broke wide open.

Fallon was too stupid to realize she was being used as a disposable weapon by corporate fraudsters. She thought she was getting paid to be a famous influencer; in reality, she was being set up as the fall girl for a multi-million-dollar corporate conspiracy.

I stood up from Arthur's desk, picking up my leather coat.