Chapter 4 - The Viral Exposure
The glass-walled offices of Apex Capital in downtown Washington D.C. overlooked the Potomac River, but for Derek Fielder, the view felt like the window of a high-altitude bomber that had just lost its engines.
It was 3:30 p.m. position, and the air inside the conference room was thick with the scent of expensive toner and panic. Marcus Vance, a man whose family had controlled Southern logistics for three generations, sat at the end of the mahogany table with a tablet computer pushed into the center of the room.
On the screen, a video was playing. It wasn't a high-resolution corporate presentation. It was shaky, vertical footage recorded on an iPhone from row 3B of Flight 1422.
The audio was crisp. Derek’s own voice echoed off the glass walls: "I paid for first class. I am not sitting beside someone who looks like she came in from an alley... get up before this gets embarrassing."
Then came the General's entrance, the dropped bag, and the revelation of the Navy Cross."Do you know what this is, Derek?" Marcus Vance asked, his voice dangerously soft. He didn't look like a man who was angry; he looked like a man who was calculating the cost of a terminal illness.
"Marcus, the video is edited," Derek stammered, his collar feeling like an iron band around his throat. "The woman was uncooperative. She wouldn't show her pass. She smelled of bleach and—"
"She smelled of the Cook County trauma ward, you pathetic child," Vance said, slamming his hand down on the table with a crack that made the tablet jump. "She had just finished an eighteen-hour shift saving lives after a twelve-car pileup on the interstate. She is a decorated combat hero who has more honor in her left thumb than you have in your entire bloodline!"
"I was protecting the firm's privacy—"
"You were protecting your own bloated ego!" Vance stood up, his face dark with fury. "Do you have any idea who called my office today? The Undersecretary of the Navy. The Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They didn't call to ask about our quarterly returns, Derek. They called to ask why Apex Capital employs a man who treats a Navy Cross recipient like a dog at an airport."
The door to the conference room opened, and a young associate walked in, her face pale. She handed a printed statement to Vance without saying a word, then quickly backed out of the room.
Vance scanned the paper, then let out a short, cold breath.
"The Board of Directors has just completed their emergency vote," Vance said, tossing the paper down in front of Derek. "Your equity is being liquidated under the moral turpitude clause of your contract. Your employment with Apex Capital is terminated, effective immediately. Security is currently clearing out your desk into two cardboard boxes at the reception desk."
Derek stared at the paper. The numbers—the millions in unvested options, the bonuses he had spent the last six years clawing his way toward—were gone. Rubbed out by a single flight from Chicago.
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"Marcus, you can't do this," Derek pleaded, his voice breaking into a high, desperate whine. "I built the infrastructure for the defense fund! I’m the one who secured the high-yield logistics contracts!"
"The infrastructure belongs to the firm," Vance said, turning his back to look out over the river. "And the contracts are currently being transferred to a veteran-owned logistics group in Maryland as part of our restitution agreement with the Department of Defense. Get out of my building, Derek. And if I see your face on this street again, I’ll ensure the civil suit for corporate defamation strips you of that silver watch you love so much."
