Chapter 7: Sabotage and Cracks in the Facade

Chapter 7: Sabotage and Cracks in the Facade

Liam Sterling tasted ashes. The ghost of his father’s disappointment was a bitter film in his mouth, more potent than the two-hundred-dollar scotch he’d just poured. He stood in his sterile, minimalist office on the 60th floor—an office that now felt less like a symbol of his power and more like a gilded cage where he’d been publicly declawed.

He had replayed the boardroom meeting a hundred times in his head. The way the board members had looked at him after Elara’s presentation, their polite, predatory gazes shifting from him to her. The way his father had dismissed his opinion as "feelings" while lauding her "numbers." She hadn’t just presented a plan; she had conducted his vivisection on that obsidian table, and his father had handed her the scalpel.

She had done this to him. Deliberately. The viral video, the perfectly timed ambition—it was all a calculated attack, a scheme to humiliate him on the grandest possible stage. The idea that she might have simply been good at her job, that her success was her own, was an impossibility his ego could not compute. She was supposed to be at home, heartbroken and irrelevant. Instead, she was here, in his tower, stealing his birthright.

A primal, cornered-animal rage surged through him. If he couldn't beat her with merit—a game he now realized he was hopelessly ill-equipped to play—he would beat her with treachery. He was a Sterling. The rules were for other people.

Elara was given a temporary office that was more of a glass-walled fishbowl, situated conspicuously in the marketing department. It came with a state-of-the-art computer, an expense account, and the palpable resentment of every employee who now saw her as the reason their princeling Vice President had been so thoroughly neutered. They were polite to her face, but their whispers followed her down the hall.

She ignored them, pouring all her energy into the project. Augustus Sterling had given her a direct mandate and a terrifyingly short deadline. She spent the first few days in a whirlwind of data analysis and preliminary creative sprints, the thrill of the work overriding her unease. The project was the opportunity of a lifetime.

The first sign of trouble was subtle. A key market research file she had saved to the shared server was suddenly corrupted. The IT department was apologetic but unhelpful, blaming it on a "server glitch." Elara lost half a day of work recreating the analysis. She felt a prickle of suspicion but dismissed it as paranoia.

The second sign was impossible to ignore. Two days later, a tech gossip blog, notorious for its snark and anonymous inside sources, published a story with the headline: “STERLING’S SHOCKING REBRAND: LEAKED LOGOS SHOW A COMPANY IN CRISIS.”

The article featured two of her very early, rough-draft logo concepts—the ones she had explicitly marked as "experimental" in a digital folder accessible only to senior management. The blog post tore them apart, calling them "childish" and "a desperate attempt to look trendy." The comments section was a bloodbath of ridicule.

Elara stared at the screen, her blood turning to ice. The images weren't just stolen; they were curated to be the weakest, most unflattering examples of her exploratory work. This wasn't a random leak. It was a targeted assassination of her credibility before she could even present her final concepts. There was only one person with the access, the motive, and the petty malevolence to do this.

Liam.

While Elara was fighting a war of corporate espionage, Liam was losing a battle on the home front. He stormed into his mansion that evening, his mind consumed with the exhilarating cruelty of his sabotage, only to be met by Chloe, who was pouting dramatically on a white leather sofa.

"There you are," she said, her voice a sharp accusation. "I've been texting you all day. Did you see the new Hermès Kelly that dropped? It's the exact color I need for my Aspen content. We need to go now before it's gone."

"I've had a long day, Chloe," Liam snapped, yanking his tie loose. "I don't have time to chase after a handbag."

Chloe's perfectly sculpted brows shot up. "You don't have time? Liam, my brand is built on luxury. My followers expect a certain lifestyle. The lifestyle you promised me. We haven't been on a trip in three weeks. People are starting to think we're boring."

"My father is watching every dollar I spend," he growled, the truth slipping out in his anger. After the boardroom meeting, Augustus had put him on a figurative and financial leash. His corporate card was being audited weekly, his expense reports scrutinized. The endless river of cash he'd used to keep Chloe placated had slowed to a miserable trickle.

"So your dad is mad at you? What does that have to do with me?" she demanded, her voice rising to a childish whine. The transactional nature of their relationship, usually veiled under a thin layer of affection, was now laid bare. "I left my apartment for this. I put all my effort into… into us. This brand. 'Liam and Chloe'. You can't just stop holding up your end of the deal because you had a bad day at the office!"

"It was more than a bad day!" he exploded, the fury from the boardroom finally finding a target. "Your 'bad day at the office' is deciding which filter to use! My father brought my ex-girlfriend in to do my job because he thinks I'm an incompetent idiot!"

He hadn't meant to say it, to admit the depth of his humiliation. The words hung in the air between them, ugly and raw.

Chloe stared at him, her blue eyes wide. But there was no sympathy in her expression, only a dawning, horrified realization. The problem wasn't a temporary mood; the problem was a compromised asset.

"Elara?" she asked, the name dripping with venom. "That boring girl from the video is working for your dad?" The gears were turning in her head, connecting the dots. His bad mood, the lack of spending, the sudden appearance of his ex. It all added up to one thing: his status was threatened. Which meant her status was threatened.

"This is all her fault," Liam seethed, pacing the cold marble floor. "She's trying to ruin me."

"Then ruin her back!" Chloe shot back, her voice sharp. "I don't care how you do it, Liam. But you need to fix this. I am not going back to being a fast-fashion influencer who can't afford a real vacation. You promised me the world. You'd better start delivering."

She turned her back on him, pointedly picking up her phone and starting to scroll, dismissing him and his problems entirely. Liam was left standing in the middle of his vast, empty living room, the silence punctuated by the faint, mindless tapping of her acrylic nails on the screen. The perfect, adoring girlfriend he'd flaunted to the world was gone, replaced by a sullen, demanding business partner whose investment was souring. His beautiful new life, the one he'd destroyed his old one for, was already showing deep, ugly cracks. It was just another thing he had to blame Elara for. And it only fueled his resolve to burn her project, and her career, to the ground.