Chapter 3 - The Panic at Vance Technologies
By nine o'clock the following morning, Dominic Vance looked like a man who had aged twenty years overnight. He hadn't slept. He had spent the entire night barricaded in a dismal budget motel room off the interstate, frantically dialing every venture capitalist, angel investor, and board member associated with Vance Technologies.
Every single number went straight to voicemail. Or worse, when someone did pick up—like Marcus Sterling, the managing director of Apex Ventures—the response was chillingly uniform.
“Mr. Vance, effective immediately, Apex is terminating all contractual relationships with your firm,” Sterling had snapped before disconnecting. “We don’t do business with men who are blacklisted by Charles Brooks.”
Stumbling out of the motel into the damp morning air, Dominic hurried toward his downtown office tower. He still clung to a shred of desperate hope. Perhaps the corporate accounts were just frozen temporarily. Perhaps his lead software architects could salvage the codebase before the board caught wind of the financial panic.
As he pushed through the glass revolving doors of the grand corporate lobby where Vance Technologies occupied the entire forty-second floor, he noticed something was wrong immediately.
The security guards at the front desk weren't his usual private contractors. They were heavy-set, uniformed men wearing armbands bearing the emblem of Brooks Global Security.
“Hold on there, buddy,” the lead guard barked, stepping directly into Dominic's path. “ID badge or appointment slip.”
“Are you insane?” Dominic snapped, trying to brush past him. “I am Dominic Vance! I am the CEO and founder of this company! I sign your paychecks!”
“Not anymore, you don't,” a crisp, familiar voice echoed from behind the elevator banks.
Dominic spun around. Walking toward him was Arthur Vance—no, not Arthur, but someone far worse. Wait, no—it was corporate liquidator Evelyn Vance? No, it was Sarah Chen, the chief financial officer of Vance Technologies whom Dominic had hired six months ago. But she wasn't carrying her usual tablet. She was carrying a box of personal belongings, and her expression was filled with absolute contempt.
“Sarah!” Dominic rushed toward her, grabbing her arm. “Thank God. What is going on here? The security guards are insane, the building locks are changed, and my corporate cards are all declining. What is happening to our server infrastructure?”
Sarah wrenched her arm out of his grip as if touching him would contaminate her. She looked at him with profound disgust.
“Our infrastructure, Dominic?” she spat, her voice ringing clear across the marble lobby, drawing the stares of arriving employees. “There is no 'our.' The entire proprietary server stack, the cloud hosting contracts, and the core intellectual property licenses are owned outright by Brooks Global Tech Holdings. At 8:00 AM sharp, they executed a global asset recall.”
Dominic stared at her, uncomprehending. “A recall? You can't recall software!”
“When the source code was written by engineers leased from Charles Brooks’ defense contracting division, yes, you can,” Sarah replied coldly. She popped open her briefcase and pulled out a certified legal notice, shoving it against Dominic's chest. “Effective today, Vance Technologies has been dissolved, liquidated, and struck from the state registry. Every bank account has been swept to cover outstanding supplier debts—debts, by the way, that were guaranteed by your personal signature.”
Dominic staggered backward, the legal paper fluttering to the tile floor. “My signature... but the corporate veil—”
“Was pierced the moment our legal team audited your personal expense accounts and discovered you were using company capital to fund luxury vacations for your mother and sister while your wife was paying for groceries out of her own pocket,” Sarah said, her eyes flashing. “Oh, did you think nobody knew? Everyone in the C-suite knew, Dominic. We just tolerated your arrogant ass because Charles Brooks was paying us double-time to keep your failing startup afloat while his daughter played house.”
The floor seemed to drop out from under Dominic's feet. The whole world was crashing down in slow motion. The prestige, the wealth, the investor dinners, the adulation from his family—it was all an illusion built on the grace of an invisible father-in-law he had treated like a peasant.
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“Where is Audrey?” Dominic whispered, panic finally turning into raw, suffocating terror. “I need to see my wife. I need to see my son.”
“Your wife filed for emergency divorce and full, unrestricted custody of Leo this morning at 6:00 AM,” Sarah said, turning her back on him and walking toward the revolving doors. “And trust me, Dominic? With Charles Brooks backing her legal team, you won't even get custody of a goldfish.”
