CHAPTER 217: ESCALATION

The trouble wasn’t that they wanted blood. The trouble was that they were smart enough to plan it three moves ahead, like some meth-addicted Bobby Fischer. Anticipating their next strike and moving before they could execute—that was the real chess game here.

They had their precious 20% of shares now. Cute. A nice little participation trophy. But twenty percent wasn’t nearly enough to topple Charlotte. Daddy Dead Thompson—God rest his strategic, capitalist soul—had locked 75% of the company in family hands. Which meant no amount of Wall Street rats with cocaine habits and overpriced Rolexes and Bugatti’s could just Venmo their way to control.

So, what the fuck could be their next move?

And no, I wasn’t asking the universe. I knew these people. These weren’t the type that file a lawsuit and pout in Forbes, types. With Helena Voss—the ex-CIA black ops bitch who probably waterboarded people for fun—running the death train aimed directly at Charlotte, we weren’t talking orthodox strategies.

Orthodox was dead. Orthodox was boring. Orthodox was what you do before brunch.

These assholes had already killed Bob Thompson. Like, the main character of Quantum Tech. Poof—gone. Game of Thrones’d right out of existence pretending to be his friend. And now his "little princess" Charlotte was left clutching the family crown. Which made the next step painfully obvious.

Wait.

"They’d eliminated Bob Thompson. That means—"

"Charlotte’s mother!" ARIA blurted, her holographic eyes faking the flaring widen like she just saw her favorite K-pop star get caught shoplifting.

Click.

The pieces slammed together in my head like some Ikea nightmare puzzle where you realize you’ve been using the wrong wrench for an hour. Margaret Thompson. The last five percent. The golden ticket. The shares they couldn’t just buy like a Birkin bag at auction.

And Margaret? Oh, Margaret wasn’t like the other boardroom lemmings they’d corrupted one by one. She was untouchable in that very smug, New England, pearls-at-the-country-club way. Which left only one option.

"Threaten or blackmail her!" ARIA finished again, her voice cracking with that sharp edge she always got when the digital gears in her head spun into nightmare territory.

"ARIA, run through everything—tell me what Margaret can be blackmailed with—"

"Already did, Master!" she cut in, way too eager, like an intern hopped up on Red Bull trying to impress Elon Musk. My screens exploded with streams of data, like a Vegas fireworks show but nerdier.

I leaned in, every muscle tight. This was it. The skeleton in Margaret’s diamond-encrusted closet. The affair, the secret cocaine yacht parties, the offshore bank accounts with names like "Definitely Not Bribes Ltd."

Except... nothing.

Margaret Thompson, the billionaire widow, was squeaky clean. Cleaner than a Disney star’s publicist’s statement after a DUI. While she hadn’t always adored her husband—because, newsflash, what billionaire couple does?—she’d never cheated. Never touched shady finances. No coke. No gambling. No shadowy Cayman bank accounts.

I sat back, actually stunned. Like, jaw-dropped, like I had just watched a priest twerk on TikTok. Stunned. Every rich person I’d ever known had skeletons rattling so loud in their closets you could remix them into a Travis Scott beat. But Margaret? Margaret was apparently the Virgin Mary with a hedge fund.

Which meant the only leverage they had left...

"The only thing they can go after..." I muttered, the thought crawling up my spine like cold steel.

ARIA’s digital pupils dilated, digital fear etched across her face.

"...is..."

"Charlotte," I cut in, the words tasting like frostbite as they hit my tongue. My blood went colder than a Kardashian prenup. "If they threaten to expose that her shiny Harvard MBA and Stanford computer science master’s were bought off like knockoff Yeezys on Canal Street—if she never earned a single goddamn thing..."

"Charlotte won’t just lose her public image," ARIA continued, voice sharp as shattered glass, data spilling across the screens like a rave for nerds. "She’d lose everything. Federal fraud investigations. SEC violations. Criminal charges for academic conspiracy. The board would have her yeeted out of the CEO chair faster than James Charles loses sponsorships."

My jaw tightened. The scope of destruction was obscene.

"But Master—it goes far beyond Charlotte." ARIA’s holographic face glitched with digital dread. "Harvard and Stanford themselves would burn. Their degree verification, their admissions processes, their entire ivory-tower credibility would be under federal investigation. Two of the most prestigious universities in the world—turned into memes overnight."

The data flooded faster, screens blinking like slot machines rigged by Satan.

"Harvard would face congressional hearings, accreditation reviews, lawsuits from every alum who suddenly realized their six-figure debt bought them a diploma with less credibility than a YouTube boxing title. Stanford’s computer science program—currently ranked number one worldwide—would have its rep nuked harder than MySpace after Facebook showed up."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "And the financial fallout?" I asked, already bracing for the apocalypse.

ARIA didn’t hesitate. "Conservative estimates: $107 million owed to Harvard, $152 million to Stanford. That’s just for reputational harm, lost donations, legal fees, we cannot trust they’ll not push further to milk ’The Helpless Princess’. Add federal fines, shareholder lawsuits, criminal restitution... we’re looking at over $800 million in personal liability. Minimum. Meaning each of the two institute could milk at least $400M just for the sake of it."

I let out a low whistle. Eight hundred million. That wasn’t just losing money—that was having your soul repossessed.

"And the universities won’t just sue," ARIA pressed. "They’ll crucify her in Times Square. They’ll demand criminal prosecution to prove they’re not the admissions equivalent of Tinder Swindler. Charlotte would face 15–20 years in federal prison for fraud, wire fraud, racketeering. Her father’s donation history would be dissected like a frog in sophomore bio. Entire degrees might get invalidated retroactively. We’re talking apocalypse—academic edition."

I sat there, staring at the data firestorm. All the money, all the power, all the branding in the world—none of it would save Charlotte if this bomb dropped.

And for the first time in years, I felt that ice in my veins whisper something I hated to admit.

She was actually... vulnerable.

I nodded slowly, brain firing like a casino slot machine on coke. "Yeah, that tracks. With evidence like that hanging over Charlotte’s head, Margaret would cough up that 5% in half a heartbeat. Not worth watching her golden child get shredded like a TikTok star’s career after one racist livestream."