Chapter 3 - The Monday Morning Wire
Monday morning arrived with a clear, merciless sky.
At 7:45 AM, my brother Caleb was sitting in the corner office of Apex Capital Holdings, a prestigious venture capital firm in the financial district. He was wearing his best tailored suit, leaning back in his leather swivel chair, showing his phone screen to three junior analysts.
"Yeah, that’s my sister," Caleb boasted loudly, tapping the screen where the TikTok video had now passed 3.5 million views. "Total deadbeat. Hasn't worked a real job in three years. Lives up in the woods like some kind of feral animal. My mom finally had enough."
The junior analysts laughed nervously, eager to stay on the good side of a guy whose uncle sat on the advisory board.
At precisely 8:00 AM, Caleb’s desktop computer chimed with an automated alert from Terminal Bloomberg, the professional financial news feed every employee at Apex was required to monitor.
A red banner flashed across the top of the screen:
BREAKING NEWS: VANGUARD TECHNOLOGIES ACQUIRES AETHERIA FOR $340 MILLION IN CASH AND STOCK.
Caleb glanced at the notification idly. "Man, $340 million for an AI startup? Some lucky bastard just hit the lottery."
He clicked the article link to read the founder’s name, intending to see if it was anyone he’d gone to business school with.
The headline loaded:
FROM OFF-GRID CABIN TO NINE-FIGURE FOUNDER: HOW 28-YEAR-OLD SARAH STERLING BUILT AETHERIA IN TOTAL SECRECY.
Caleb froze.
The color drained from his face so fast he felt dizzy. His hands began to shake as he dragged the mouse down the screen to load the high-resolution hero photo accompanying the piece.
There I was.
I was sitting on the wooden porch of my mountain cabin. My face was un-emoting, my eyes staring straight into the camera lens with absolute authority. On my shoulders was the gray thrift-store hoodie, clearly marked with dark, dry espresso stains across the neckline, accompanied by a visible red burn mark along my jawline.
The caption beneath the photograph read: “Sarah Sterling, pictured hours after finalizing the $340 million sale of AetherIA. Sterling, who spent three years living in near-poverty to bootstrap her predictive AI platform, revealed she was assaulted by family members over the weekend who mocked her modest lifestyle—unaware she was already a multi-centimillionaire.”
The room went dead quiet.
One of the junior analysts looked up from his monitor, his eyes wide as saucer plates, glancing back and forth between Caleb’s phone—which was still playing the viral video of Beatrice pouring coffee over my head—and the Bloomberg profile.
"Caleb..." the analyst whispered, his voice trembling. "Is... is that your sister?"
Before Caleb could form a sentence, his desk phone rang. The caller ID displayed the name of the firm's Managing Senior Partner: RICHARD HOLT.
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Caleb’s throat went bone dry. He picked up the receiver with a clammy hand. "H-hello, Mr. Holt?"
"Caleb," Richard Holt’s voice was as cold as liquid nitrogen. "Get into my office. Right now."
