Chapter 8 A crisp payback

At midnight, Kinsley walked into Ethan's massive server room. The walls were lined with glowing monitors and cooling fans humming loudly.

Ethan sat in a leather gaming chair, wearing noise-canceling headphones, his fingers flying across his mechanical keyboard.

She set a glass of iced Americano on his desk. She dropped a small, encrypted USB drive next to it.

"Do it," she said.

Ethan plugged the drive into his terminal. High-resolution security photos popped up on the center screen.

They showed Joaquin and Ember walking into a luxury hotel room, timestamped three months before the divorce.

Next to the photos was an audio file.

It was the recording of Julianne screaming at her in the rain, calling her "trailer park trash."

Ethan smirked. "If we send this to the New York Times, Stafford's PR team will bury it with money."

"Then do not use traditional media," she said, her voice devoid of mercy.

Ethan cracked his knuckles. "I am deploying a botnet. Decentralized posting on X. They will not be able to delete it."

She leaned over and pressed the Enter key herself.

At 3:00 AM, a thread titled "The Fake Deep Love of Wall Street's Golden Boy" exploded on X.

The botnet tagged the SEC, major financial news outlets, and every prominent gossip influencer.

Within ten minutes, the post hit one hundred thousand retweets. The internet woke up.

The photos proved Joaquin violated his own morality clause. But it was Julianne's audio that lit the fire. The sheer classist hatred in her voice triggered massive outrage across the country.

At 7:00 AM, pre-market trading opened. Stafford Holdings stock immediately crashed 15%.

Joaquin was jolted awake in his penthouse by his phone ringing endlessly.

He stared at the trending hashtags on his screen. The blood drained from his face, leaving him pale and terrified.

Ember woke up beside him. She saw the thousands of comments calling her a homewrecker. She screamed, clutched her chest, and fell back onto the pillows, faking a heart spasm.

"Get my pills!" Ember cried.

Joaquin scrambled for her medicine while screaming at his PR director on speakerphone. "Take it down! Pay whatever it costs!"

"We cannot, sir!" the PR director cried. "It is a coordinated cyber attack. The platform refuses to intervene."

Julianne called on the other line, screeching that her country club friends were laughing at her.

Joaquin realized only one person had the motive. He dialed Kinsley's number, his hands shaking with rage. The automated voice told him he was blocked.

He threw his phone against the wall, shattering the screen. He ordered his security team to search every cheap motel in the city to find her and shut her up.

Back at the Wilder estate, Kinsley sat in the sunroom, elegantly slicing a piece of Eggs Benedict.

Hubert drank his coffee, watching the red lines dive on his financial tablet. He gave her an approving nod.

Amiyah walked in. She saw the news. Her face turned pale.

Her phone buzzed. The tabloid journalist texted her: The whole country loves Kinsley right now. If I post your fake dirt on her, my career is over. Deal is off.

Amiyah gripped her toast so hard it crumbled into pieces in her fist.

Charles stepped into the room. "Miss Kinsley, Mr. Brady's car is waiting outside."

She wiped her mouth with a linen napkin. It was time for her date.