Chapter 4 - The Stolen Pitch
By the following Wednesday, Chloe Bennett was living in an alternate reality she was entirely unequipped to navigate.
At home, the Renton house was an active disaster zone. The internet was gone, forcing Richard to sit in a Starbucks parking lot to check his pension statements. Margaret’s leased Subaru had a red repossession warning mailed to the door because Emma’s account had bounced the automated draw. Richard’s heart medication had cost $480 out of pocket at the pharmacy counter, draining their joint savings account to an alarming three-digit balance.
Yet, despite the financial earthquake, the family’s conclusion was not remorse. It was vicious, concentrated entitlement.
*“She’s trying to starve us into begging,”* Margaret had hissed over lukewarm tap water the night before. *“She thinks because she’s CEO, she can treat her own flesh and blood like dogs! You show her, Chloe. You go into that office, you do something brilliant, and you force her to recognize you. If you get promoted, she can’t touch you without looking like a monster!”*
Chloe had taken that toxic advice to heart.
Sitting at her cubicle in the West Tower, Chloe glared at the shared network folder on her company terminal. Her department was preparing the Q3 pitch for the *Vespera Line*—Harrington’s flagship luxury skincare brand, slated for a $50 million nationwide rollout. The associate team was supposed to compile data analytics, but the lead strategist, an introverted woman named Sarah Lin, had spent three weeks drafting a revolutionary campaign centered on sustainable supply-chain storytelling.
Sarah had stepped away from her desk to attend a doctor's appointment.
Her terminal was unlocked.
Chloe’s heart raced. She looked over her shoulder. The floor was quiet; most associates were in the cafeteria.
With shaking hands, Chloe slipped a flash drive into Sarah’s port, dragged the final slide deck—*Vespera: Origin & Authenticity*—onto her drive, and deleted Sarah’s name from the master title slide. In its place, in bold, twenty-point font, she typed:
*Lead Concept by: Chloe Bennett, Associate Brand Coordinator.*
“Let’s see Emma ignore this,” Chloe muttered to herself, her cheeks flushed with reckless adrenaline. “Let her try to call me useless when I save the company’s biggest account.”
At 3:00 PM, the Consumer Relations department convened in Conference Room 14B for the internal review. What Chloe hadn't anticipated was that Emma Bennett was conducting random divisional audits throughout the week.
When the heavy frosted-glass doors of Room 14B opened, it wasn't just the department head, Marcus Sterling, who walked in.
It was Emma.
Flanked by two senior directors and Arthur Vance, Emma moved with that same lethal, quiet precision. She took her seat at the head of the conference table, folded her hands, and nodded to Sterling.
“Proceed, Marcus,” Emma said softly. “Show me why Harrington is spending fifty million dollars on Vespera.”
Sterling cleared his throat, nervous under the gaze of his new boss. “Of course, Ms. Bennett. Our associate team has prepared several conceptual directions. Associate Bennett has volunteered to present the lead strategy.”
Chloe’s heart leaped into her throat. She stood up, smoothing her crimson blazer—the only expensive piece of clothing she owned—and stepped up to the digital smartboard.
For the first ten minutes, Chloe read directly from Sarah Lin’s stolen slides. She spoke with theatrical flair, tossing her hair, smiling at the directors, deliberately avoiding Emma’s eyes while ensuring her voice projected authority.
“And so,” Chloe concluded, clicking to the final slide with a triumphant grin, “by pivoting our packaging narrative to emphasize the clean extraction process in our alpine labs, we capture the Gen-Z luxury demographic effortlessly. It’s fresh. It’s bold. It’s what I personally designed for this house.”
The room was silent. Marcus Sterling smiled nervously, nodding in approval.
Then, Emma spoke.
“Fascinating,” Emma said. Her voice was conversational, almost gentle.
Chloe beamed. *I got her. She has to praise me in front of the board.*
“Tell me, Associate Bennett,” Emma continued, leaning back slightly in her leather chair, her gaze pinning Chloe to the smartboard like a butterfly on corkboard. “Slide seven references an eighty-four percent reduction in carbon transit by shifting our raw packaging supplier from the Pearl River Delta to the Lyon manufacturing corridor. What specific tariff impact did you model for the European Union’s upcoming cross-border carbon tax adjustment in Q4?”
Chloe’s smile froze.
The color drained from her cheeks. “The... the tariff impact?”
“Yes,” Emma said. “You personally designed this strategy, correct? So you obviously calculated the margin variance between the maritime freight routes and the trans-continental rail option you proposed on slide twelve. What was the net basis point deduction on EBITDA?”
Chloe opened her mouth. No sound came out.
“I... well, we looked at the overall synergy—”
“EBITDA is not a synergy, Miss Bennett. It is arithmetic,” Emma interrupted, her tone flat, surgical, and utterly devoid of pity. “Did you calculate it?”
“I... Sarah helped with some of the back-end numbers—” Chloe stammered, panic finally cracking her glossy facade.
“Sarah Lin?” Emma asked, raising a single eyebrow. Emma picked up a tablet on the table. “Because according to the internal server access logs timestamped at 1:14 PM today, Sarah Lin’s encrypted profile was accessed from your terminal while she was logged out of the building on approved medical leave.”
A collective gasp rippled through the conference room. Marcus Sterling sat upright, his face white with sudden terror.
“You didn't design this deck,” Emma said, standing up. She wasn't yelling. She didn't have to. The sheer weight of her voice crushed the room. “You downloaded an unreleased operational brief, slapped your name onto another woman’s three weeks of labor, and presented it to the Chief Executive Officer without understanding a single fundamental metric on the screen.”
“Emma, please!” Chloe cried out, forgetting all corporate decorum in her terror. “It was a team effort! I just wanted to show you what I could do!”
“What you have shown me,” Emma said, looking at Marcus Sterling, “is that your department’s internal controls are negligent. Mr. Sterling, you will issue Associate Bennett an official Level 3 Disciplinary Written Warning for intellectual theft and fraudulent representation. Her system privileges are downgraded to Level 1. She is barred from presenting or touching client accounts for the duration of her probationary period.”
“Understood, Ms. Bennett,” Sterling choked out, glaring at Chloe with pure hatred for dragging his department into the CEO’s crosshairs.
Emma turned her gaze back to Chloe.
May you like
“You wanted to step into greatness, Miss Bennett,” Emma said, quoting Chloe’s viral social media post word-for-word with lethal, quiet amusement. “I suggest you learn how to read a balance sheet before you steal another one. Meeting adjourned.”
***
