Chapter 8 - Corporate Guillotine: Cutting Off The Unearned VP Executive Salary
While Wendy was being publicly dismantled at the country club, Luca was sitting in the corner office of Vance Logistics on the fourth floor of the Pearl Street Commercial Center.
Or rather, the office he thought was his.
When Luca and I were married, I had created a subsidiary logistics branch within my tech enterprise, naming it Vance Logistics as a gesture of goodwill to help him build a legitimate career. I had granted him the title of Executive Vice President, allocated him a comfortable annual salary of $250,000, and assigned a team of seasoned operations managers to actually run the business while he played golf and took clients out to expensive dinners.
Luca was currently on the phone with his bank, screaming into the receiver.
“What do you mean my personal checking account is overdrawn by fourteen thousand dollars?! I have a direct deposit scheduled for today!”
“Mr. Vance,” the bank representative replied wearily. “The payroll deposit from Skyline Logistics Group was cancelled by the corporate comptroller at 7:00 AM this morning. Furthermore, your two automated lease payments for the Porsche 911 GT3 were returned for insufficient funds.”
Luca slammed the phone down, clutching his head in his hands.
His entire artificial world was crumbling faster than a house of cards in a hurricane. Without the corporate salary, without the credit cards, and without the mansion, he had less than four hundred dollars in liquid cash to his name.
The double doors of his executive office suddenly swung open.
David Chen, my lead forensic auditor, stepped into the room, flanked by two armed private security guards and a senior IT technician carrying a heavy aluminum equipment case.
Luca sprang out of his chair. “What is the meaning of this?! Get out of my office!”
David Chen didn't flinch. He walked straight to the mahogany desk, opened a leather portfolio, and placed an official corporate resolution directly in front of Luca.
“Mr. Vance,” David said with clinical detachment. “At an emergency meeting of the Board of Directors of Skyline Logistics Group held at 8:30 AM, the Board voted unanimously to dissolve the Vance Logistics subsidiary, effective immediately.”
Luca’s eyes widened in horror. “You can’t dissolve this company! It has my name on the door!”
“The name on the door is an intellectual property trademark owned exclusively by Skyline Crest Holdings,” David replied smoothly. “You hold zero equity shares, zero voting stock, and zero board governance rights. Your employment as Executive Vice President has been terminated with cause.”
“With cause?!” Luca yelled, his voice cracking. “What cause?!”
David clicked open his laptop and spun it around, displaying a multi-tabbed spreadsheet with highlighted red rows stretching across the screen.
“In the last twenty-four months, you have misappropriated over four hundred and eighty thousand dollars in corporate operational capital,” David explained, his voice entirely devoid of pity. “You coded private vacations to Aspen, luxury designer shopping sprees for your sister Stephanie, and five-star spa retreats for your mother as ‘client entertainment expenses.’ That constitutes corporate embezzlement and breach of fiduciary duty.”
Luca felt the floor beneath his feet tilt. The cold sweat soaked through his shirt.
“Jessi wouldn't press charges,” Luca stammered, his arrogance completely collapsing into naked fear. “She... she wouldn't do that to the father of her child.”
“Ms. Vance has already authorized the full transmission of these audit files to the Colorado State Attorney General’s Commercial Fraud Division,” David replied calmly. “However, her legal counsel has provided a single conditional waiver.”
David slid a legal document and a sleek black pen toward Luca.
“What is this?” Luca asked with trembling hands.
“This is a total, irrevocable relinquishment of all parental rights, a full waiver of any future claims against Ms. Vance’s estate, and a mutual non-disclosure agreement with a five-million-dollar penalty clause,” David said. “You sign this document today, and Ms. Vance will decline to pursue criminal restitution for the four hundred and eighty thousand dollars you stole from the corporate treasury. You walk away clean. You refuse to sign, and the Boulder County Sheriff will have an arrest warrant executed for grand larceny before five o’clock today.”
The IT technician immediately began unplugging Luca’s desktop computer, packing the hard drives into anti-static bags. The two security guards moved to the corners of the desk, their posture making it abundantly clear that Luca had nowhere to run.
Luca looked at the document.
He looked at the pen.
For three years, he had lived as a titan of industry, admired by his peers, envied by his friends, showered in unimaginable luxury. And now, he was faced with a choice between signing away every shred of his fabricated life or spending the next ten years in a federal penitentiary.
His hand shook violently as his fingers closed around the cold metal of the pen.
May you like
With tears of pure, bitter defeat streaming down his face, Luca bent over the desk and scribbled his signature across the dotted line.
“Pack your personal belongings in a single box,” David said, taking the signed document and blowing gently on the wet ink. “You have five minutes to clear the building.”
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