Chapter 7 - The Downward Spiral
Without the Target deal, the financial dominoes began to fall with terrifying speed.
Salt & Sage’s major creditors, panicked by the news of the canceled contract and the patent lawsuit, began calling in their short-term loans. The company’s stock value, which had been privately traded among secondary markets at thirty dollars a share, plummeted to less than two dollars in forty-eight hours.
Then came the internal audit.
Prompted by the documents I had retrieved from the Back Bay apartment safe, Arthur Pendelton and the independent board members ordered a forensic accounting team to review every transaction executed by Ethan over the last three years.
The results were catastrophic.
Ethan hadn't just given Vanessa seventy-five thousand dollars for "consulting." He had funneled over eight hundred thousand dollars of corporate capital into her shell company, Miller Creative Ventures, to cover her failed art gallery in Montreal, her personal credit card debts, and high-stakes options trading accounts that had liquidated into total losses.
On Thursday morning, the board met in an emergency session and officially terminated Ethan Vance as Chief Executive Officer for cause, stripped him of his executive board seat, and filed a formal criminal referral with the Securities and Exchange Commission for wire fraud and embezzlement.
Vanessa fared no better. Facing imminent legal action as an unindicted co-conspirator in the embezzlement scheme, her social media accounts—which she had spent years carefully curating—were flooded with thousands of angry comments from former fans and outraged Salt & Sage customers who had learned of her role in the wedding scandal.
She posted a desperate, weeping tearful apology video on TikTok, claiming she was a "victim of Ethan’s financial manipulation."
It backfired spectacularly.
Internet sleuths immediately cross-referenced her claim with the group chat screenshots I had leaked through my legal team, showing her boasting about "borrowing somebody else's wedding." She lost fifty thousand followers in six hours and was dropped by her talent agency by sunset.
That night, I was sitting in the quiet library of my father's house in Concord, drinking chamomile tea, when my father walked in holding a silver tray with a letter on it.
"A process server just delivered this to the front door," my father said gently, placing the letter beside my tea cup. "It’s from Ethan’s personal attorney."
I opened the envelope.
It wasn't a lawsuit. It was a handwritten letter from Ethan, written on yellow legal paper.
Clare,
They’re taking everything. The board froze my accounts today. Marcus won't even answer my phone calls—he told his secretary to tell me I’m no longer his son. Vanessa packed her bags and left for Toronto two hours ago after the SEC investigators called her lawyer.
I’m sitting in the empty apartment in Back Bay. The lights are off because I forgot to pay the utility bill from the corporate card that got canceled.
I know I broke you. I know I was a monster. But please, Clare, don't let them kill Salt & Sage. It’s our baby. I will sign over my remaining stock to you for free. I will sign a permanent restraining order. I will disappear from Boston forever. Just take the company back and save it. You’re the only one who can.
I’m sorry.
Ethan.
I read the letter twice.
Two months ago, this letter would have broken my heart. I would have rushed to his side, held his hand, and spent my own savings to fix his mess.
Now, looking at his frantic, messy handwriting, I felt absolutely nothing.
"What are you going to do?" my father asked softly, placing a warm hand on my shoulder.
May you like
I folded the yellow paper into a neat square, walked over to the stone fireplace, and tossed it into the flickering embers.
"Salt & Sage is dead, Dad," I said, watching the paper curl and turn to ash. "I’m building something better."
