The Wedding Dress Fitting

Chapter 3 Insufficient Funds

### Julian's POV

By the time the elevator reached my penthouse office, I had a list of Clara's access privileges open on my phone. I intended to lock her out before she could freeze another account.

Mark, my COO, met me outside the glass doors. He kept pace beside me with his tablet held against his chest. “We have a serious problem.”

I threw my briefcase onto the leather sofa. “Call legal. Revoke every corporate account and privilege tied to Clara Vance.”

“Julian, listen first.”

“I pay you to carry out an order.”

Mark held up his tablet. “North Star, Veritas, and the Apex Group withdrew this morning. All three.”

Those accounts represented half our projected revenue for the next two quarters.

“Apex was my deal.”

“Their contracts contain the same key person provision.” He turned the screen toward me and read the clause. “Strategic oversight and risk management to be handled exclusively by Ms. Clara Vance. They're treating her absence as a breach of trust.”

I had shaken the hands and given the interviews. The clients had always called me. Clara had stayed out of the photographs.

Mia entered with a mug before I could answer. “I made your favorite coffee. I heard the men on the phone, and I thought I could help.” She set it on my desk. “Let me call them. I can be very persuasive.”

She had styled her hair and put on a pale blue dress for breakfast. She had no idea how much money we had lost in a single morning.

“Get out, Mia.”

“I only wanted to help.”

“Out.”

She left the coffee untouched. I opened the crisis management files to prove that I could recover the clients myself.

My executive summary sat at the top of the North Star folder. At the bottom of each page, Clara had added the same note: *Risk analysis complete. C.V.*

The Veritas contract bore my signature. Its three-page emergency addendum, the document that saved negotiations at the eleventh hour, had been drafted by C.V.

Then I opened the Apex investor memorandum. Every slide in the financial model I had presented carried an invisible watermark: *Authored by C.V.*

The files kept going. Clara's initials sat beneath the contingency plans, stress tests, and risk models. I had delivered her strategies in my own voice and accepted every compliment.

Sweat dampened the hand holding the mouse. Each document made the same point, and I refused to accept it. I told myself she had done it on purpose, making the company depend on her so she could punish me later.

I sent her a message.

*This game is over. Be in my office by noon and apologize. Don't make this worse for yourself.*

The message was delivered. She did not answer.

### Clara's POV

Sterling Capital's boardroom occupied the hundredth floor. I finished presenting a hostile takeover plan for a failing tech firm and closed the deck.

The directors sat in silence long enough for me to wonder which assumption they planned to attack first. My hostile takeover model for the failing tech firm was still projected behind me. Then one director applauded. The rest joined him.

Alexander Sterling nodded from the head of the table. “Your first assignment is waiting.”

He slid a black folder across to me.

“We acquired the largest debt portfolio of a mid-cap investment firm. The company is overleveraged and has lost the person responsible for its risk strategy. Our credit team classified it as a high-risk asset this morning.”

I opened the folder.

*Thorne Group.*

“They're close to default,” Alexander said. “Sterling is calling the outstanding loans. I need someone on-site to deliver the notice.”

“When?”

“Now.”

Across town, Julian's CFO called him before I reached the elevator.

“Sterling Capital is calling the thirty-million-dollar credit line. Their new representative is coming upstairs.”

Julian straightened his tie and waited behind his desk. When the heavy oak doors opened, he was ready to threaten a stranger.

I walked in wearing the midnight suit I kept for debt negotiations. My heels sounded once on each marble tile.

He stared at me, then checked the corridor for Sterling's representative. The anger on his face shifted into a smile when he decided I had returned to make peace.

I put the black folder on his desk.

“Good morning, Julian.”