Chapter 9: The Inbox Opened

Chapter 9: The Inbox Opened

The silence in Liam’s office was a physical entity. It was heavy and cold, pressing in on him from the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a city he no longer felt he owned. Two hours ago, his father had summoned him into this very room. There had been no yelling. Augustus Sterling was not a man who wasted energy on volume. Instead, he had spoken in a low, chilling monotone, placing a slim, black tablet on the obsidian desk between them.

On the screen was Julian Thorne’s report.

Liam had stared at the neat columns of IP addresses, the timestamps, the damning digital fingerprints that traced his sabotage from his own desktop to the gossip blog. It was irrefutable, elegant, and utterly annihilating. He had been caught, not like a cunning fox, but like a clumsy child with his hand stuck in the cookie jar.

“You are not a shark, Liam,” Augustus had said, his voice like chipping ice. “You are a parasite. You tried to poison the well because you were angry that someone else was better at finding water. You have not only embarrassed me, you have proven yourself to be a liability. A stupid, petty liability.”

His corporate cards were suspended. His executive privileges were revoked. He was to remain in his office, stripped of all duties, while his father "decided what to do with him." It was a prison sentence in a corner office. The sabotage, his one desperate attempt to reclaim power, had failed so spectacularly it had vaporized what little standing he had left.

Defeated and hollowed out, he drove home to his stark white mansion, the one Chloe had insisted was essential for her "brand aesthetic." He craved comfort, a soft place to land, a moment of reprieve from the crushing weight of his failure.

He found Chloe in the cavernous walk-in closet, surrounded by a mountain of designer luggage. She wasn't packing her own clothes. She was carefully wrapping his collection of rare sneakers in plastic.

"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice a dull rasp.

"Asset allocation," she replied without looking at him, her tone brisk and businesslike. "My friend who does divorce law says when a high-value relationship dissolves, it's best to secure portable assets immediately."

"We're not married," he said, stunned. "We're not dissolving."

Chloe finally stopped and turned to him, her perfectly made-up face a mask of cold appraisal. "Liam, my brand is aspirational. It's about success, luxury, and winning. You lost. Publicly. My agent called. That tech blog story? It made you look weak, and now I'm getting comments asking if we broke up because I'm too good for you. Your mess is damaging my engagement metrics."

The clinical cruelty of her words barely registered. He was looking at a complete stranger, a ruthless business partner liquidating a failed venture. The girlfriend he’d paraded on yachts, the woman whose affection he’d purchased with bags and watches, had never existed at all.

"So that's it?" he asked, a pathetic crack in his voice. "It's just over?"

"I'm not going down with your sinking ship," she said, echoing his worst fears. "I'll have my brother come for the rest of my things tomorrow. You can Venmo me for my half of the month's rent." She picked up a Louis Vuitton duffel and walked past him without a backward glance, her phone already in her hand, likely drafting the breakup announcement.

He was alone. Utterly and completely alone in the silent, empty monument to his shallow ambitions. His father despised him. His girlfriend had abandoned him. And Elara… Elara was the architect of it all.

A desperate, insane thought began to worm its way into his mind. He stumbled to his home office and collapsed into his chair, the scotch he poured trembling in his hand. He needed a lifeline. He needed to go back to a time when he was on top, when someone had looked at him with adoration, not contempt. He needed the old Elara. The one who believed in him, who supported him, who thought he was a hero struggling against the world.

He remembered her message from that first, awful day. The one asking for his work email to send pictures of Rosie. He had never once bothered to look. Why would he? He was too busy building his shiny new life. But now, that new life lay in ruins around him.

A pathetic, desperate hope flickered within him. Maybe the pictures weren't just pictures. Maybe they were a breadcrumb trail back to her. Maybe she had sent messages, admissions of how much she missed him, hidden in the attachments. The old Elara, the one who couldn't live without him, had to still be in there somewhere. He just had to find her.

His hands shaking, he logged into his Sterling Enterprises email account for the first time in weeks. He bypassed the hundreds of unread work emails—none of them mattered now—and typed Elara Vance into the search bar.

The results populated instantly. A long, unbroken list of emails, all from her personal account. He counted them. Over two hundred. His heart gave a pathetic leap. Two hundred. She was obsessed. She couldn't let go. A faint, triumphant smirk touched his lips. She still wanted him.

He clicked on the oldest unread email, dated the day after their breakup. The subject line read: Rosie Update - 10/15/23 - 8:14 AM.

The body of the email was blank. There was a single attachment. He clicked on it. A picture of Rosie, their beautiful golden retriever, appeared on the screen. For a second, a wave of genuine nostalgia washed over him. He remembered that patch of grass in the park, the way the morning light hit the trees. Then he looked closer. Rosie was not looking at the camera. She was mid-squat, her tail arched, a look of intense concentration on her furry face as a small, neat pile of poop deposited itself on the grass beneath her.

Liam stared at the screen, a frown of confusion on his face. What a weird picture to send. An accident, maybe. He closed it and clicked on the next email.

Subject: Rosie Update - 10/15/23 - 6:22 PM.

Another picture. This time in their backyard. Rosie was in the same distinctive pose, captured from a slightly different angle.

He clicked another. And another. And another.

Rosie's Morning Constitutional - 10/16/23. Evening Deposit - 10/17/23. A Productive Afternoon - 10/18/23.

Each email was the same. A blank body. A single, high-resolution photograph of their dog in the act of defecating. Dated. Timed. Methodically documented.

He scrolled faster, clicking frantically. The pictures blurred into a horrifying, surreal montage of canine bowel movements. The park. The backyard. A hiking trail. A sidewalk. Morning, noon, and night. Rain or shine. For weeks, twice a day, every day, she had sent him a picture of their dog taking a shit.

This wasn't the work of a heartbroken woman pining for him. This wasn't a secret cry for help. This was a data-driven campaign of pure, unadulterated contempt. It was cold. It was clinical. It was a digital monument to what she thought of him, delivered daily to his corporate inbox. The two hundred emails weren't a sign of obsession. They were a meticulously curated gallery of his own shittiness, reflected in the daily habits of a dog.

The entire world narrowed to the glowing screen in front of him. The weight of his father’s disappointment, Chloe’s betrayal, and now this—this final, soul-crushing humiliation—crashed down on him at once.

A sound escaped his lips. It started as a choked gasp and then twisted into something else entirely. It was laughter. High, hysterical, and utterly unhinged. He threw his head back and howled, the sound echoing through the empty, sterile mansion, the laughter of a man who had just looked into the abyss and realized it was a photograph of a pooping dog. He laughed until tears streamed down his face, until his breath came in ragged sobs. He had been so worried about Elara going viral, about her professional triumphs, when all along, the real revenge, the most perfect and personal insult, had been sitting here, unread, piling up like a digital landfill. And he had just willingly walked right into the middle of it.