Chapter 5 - The Rebuilding of Vance AnalyticsBack in Boston, the corporate earthquake following the Miami collapse was nothing short of catastrophic.
Within forty-eight hours of Arthur Henderson pulling his account, three other major corporate clients reviewed their portfolios, discovered similar unauthorized delegation clauses, and terminated their contracts with Jared's firm. The senior partners convened an emergency weekend board meeting, reviewed the forensic audit trails provided by my legal team, and voted unanimously to strip Jared of his partnership status, freeze his equity shares, and force his immediate resignation.
As for Kiera Parker, her probationary internship was terminated with cause, and her professional reputation within the Boston financial district was effectively incinerated before her career had even officially begun.
I didn't have time to watch them fall. I was too busy building something far better.
On a crisp Tuesday morning two weeks after the Miami incident, I sat at the head of a sleek, sunlit conference table on the thirty-fifth floor of a downtown Boston high-rise.
The glass plaque beside the double doors read: VANCE ANALYTICS — EXECUTIVE CONSULTING & STRATEGIC RESTRUCTURING.
My name. My firm. My rules.
My phone buzzed on the mahogany table. It was an incoming call from an unknown, blocked number. I let it ring twice before swiping to accept, placing it on speaker so my new senior associate, a brilliant financial analyst named Marcus whom I had handpicked from a competing firm, could hear.
"Annalise?"
The voice on the other end was rough, exhausted, and desperately familiar.
Jared.
"Jared," I said calmly, reviewing a quarterly growth projection spreadsheet on my tablet. "How did you get this number?"
"Annalise, please—you have to listen to me," Jared pleaded, his voice breaking. The smooth, arrogant confidence was completely gone, replaced by the pathetic whining of a man who had hit rock bottom. "The partners... they voted me out. They stripped my shares. I lost the loft, Annalise—the bank foreclosed because my credit lines were tied to the firm's liquidity. I'm staying on a friend's pull-out couch in Cambridge. I have nothing left."
I remained silent, letting his misery hang heavily in the air between us.
"Please," he sobbed quietly. "You've always been so brilliant at this. Come back to the firm—or let me join you here at Vance Analytics. As a junior partner, as an analyst, anything! We can fix this. We can start over. Remember how good we were together?"
I looked across the table at Marcus, who raised an eyebrow with a dry, knowing smirk.
"Jared," I said softly, my voice completely steady. "When you told me to take the middle seat by the lavatories in economy because your intern needed my window seat... you taught me a very valuable lesson."
A choked sob came through the receiver. "What lesson?"
"Never fly coach when you were born to pilot the plane," I replied.
Click.
I ended the call, turned off my phone, and slid it face down onto the table.
May you like
Marcus chuckled, sliding a fresh stack of partnership contracts across the mahogany wood. "Shall we review the new client onboarding queue, Ms. Vance?"
"Let's," I smiled, uncorking my pen. "We have an empire to run."
