Chapter 5 - The Glass Shatters
Aaron did not stay in Paris for the remainder of the summit.
He didn’t even stay to face the swarm of international tech journalists currently pounding on the doors of his hotel suite. By two o'clock that afternoon, he, Evelyn, and Jasmine were in a mad scramble to return to the United States.
Except they couldn't take the G650.
When Aaron arrived at Le Bourget Airport, his face pale with fury, he found two French port authority officers stationed at the hangar gates. The private jet was sealed with red industrial tags. The French civil aviation authority informed him that because the aircraft’s operating insurance, hangar fees, and fuel contracts were held by Lumina Asset Management—which had declared the aircraft unauthorized for use—the jet was grounded pending commercial arbitration.
The billionaire tech visionary was forced to book three first-class commercial tickets on an Air France flight back to JFK, hounded by paparazzi at the terminal gates.
During the eight-hour flight back across the Atlantic, the cabin was a pressure cooker of toxic tension.
Evelyn was hyperventilating, taking sips of gin from miniature bottles. "How could she do this to you? How could she embarrass us like this? That ungrateful, vicious little viper! After everything you gave her! You made her the wife of a billionaire!"
"Shut up, Mother!" Aaron snapped, his tie undone, his collar soaked in sweat. He had spent the last six hours trying to reach his board members. Every single one went straight to voicemail.
His CFO had finally texted him three words: *Board convened without you.*
He turned his venom toward Jasmine. "You said you verified the IP licensing agreements last month! You told me all the Lumina filings were standard corporate boilerplate!"
Jasmine shrank back into her leather seat, her eyes wide with real fear. The playful, seductive persona she had used so effortlessly on the private jet had vanished. "Aaron, you told me Lumina was just your wife’s family trust! You told me it was an empty tax vessel! The legal department never gave me access to the master covenants—they said only Alyssa had the signature authorization!"
"Because she was my wife!" Aaron slammed his fist onto the armrest. "She was supposed to support me! She was supposed to do what she was told!"
When they landed at JFK at eight o'clock in the evening, Aaron turned on his phone. It exploded with over four hundred notifications.
Headlines from every major financial publication were screaming across the internet:
*BLOODBATH ON WALL STREET: PRESCOTT TECH PLUNGES 41% AMID FRAUD ALLEGATIONS.*
*WHO IS ALYSSA STERLING? THE MYSTERIOUS HEIRESS HOLDING THE KEYS TO PRESCOTT'S EMPIRE.*
*PATENT HOAX: DID AARON PRESCOTT STEAL HIS BILLION-DOLLAR CORE?*
And then came a notification from his smart-home security app at the East 68th Street townhouse.
A live camera feed showed four professional movers in gray uniforms systematically carrying Louis XIV antiques, wardrobe trunks, and oil paintings out of the front doors onto the Manhattan pavement. Standing on the marble steps was Eleanor Vance, holding an official eviction warrant.
Evelyn looked over Aaron's shoulder at the screen and let out a bloodcurdling shriek. "My house! My furniture! Aaron, she’s throwing my life onto the street!"
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"It's not your house, Mother," Aaron whispered, his face turning the color of chalk as the cold, terrifying reality began to sink through the thick walls of his arrogance. "It was never our house."
***
