Chapter 10 - CHLOE’S WORST SECRET WAS NOT CORPORATE FRAUDChloe did something wrong.
Several things.
She humiliated me for engagement.
Monetized the event without telling me.
Allowed her manager broad device access.
Failed to insist her ownership in HaloHouse be transparently disclosed through proper corporate channels.
But investigators did not find evidence she knowingly participated in Pike’s conflicts.
She did not know Mason had sent the valuation page.
She did not receive hidden kickbacks beyond her declared HaloHouse ownership distributions.
She was careless.
Entitled.
Attention-dependent.
Not secretly running a billion-dollar fraud ring.
Truth disappointed people who wanted a bigger villain.
I preferred it.
One person’s bad character in a relationship does not make them guilty of every corporate wrong nearby.
Still, one thing remained between us.
Why had she cared so much about engagement?
Eventually she told me.
HaloHouse had renegotiated her compensation six months earlier.
Her profit share depended partly on audience-growth targets.
The prank sponsorship helped.
Views translated into money.
Not only ego.
Financial incentive.
She knew.
“That’s why you did it?”
“Partly.”
“How much would you have earned?”
“Maybe another four hundred thousand this quarter.”
I stared.
“You risked our relationship for four hundred thousand dollars?”
She cried.
“It didn’t feel like that.”
“What did it feel like?”
“One joke.”
There.
That is how people cross boundaries.
They describe the choice at its smallest size.
One joke.
One invoice.
One file.
May you like
One password.
One time.
