Chapter 5
At two in the afternoon, George's scoop hit the headlines of every major financial site. The title was eye-catching, but the content was even more explosive.
The article stopped short of saying Matthew and Grace had been sleeping together for years, but every sentence was dripping with innuendo.
[According to insiders, Mr. Hawthorne and Ms. Grace Winston first met at a gala five years ago...]
[They have always been close, and Mr. Hawthorne has always been extra attentive to Ms. Grace Winston...]
[Five-year-old Fiona shares a striking resemblance to Mr. Hawthorne...]
[The breakneck speed at which Mr. Hawthorne went from "love at first sight" to divorce, engagement, and adoption is staggering...]
[Is this a case of pure passion, or is there a hidden agenda?]
Below the text were several grainy photos from that gala five years ago showing Matthew and Grace in the same frame.
They were taken from a distance and were quite blurry, but they provided more than enough fuel for the public to cook up a scandalous melodrama.
As expected, less than an hour after the article dropped, the topics with hashtags "Matthew and Grace long-term affair," "Matthew's five-year-old love child," and "Hawthorne heir blinded by love" swept the top three spots on the trending charts.
The comments section was a total war zone.
[I knew it. No one falls in love at first sight, gets divorced, and adopts a kid that fast unless they've been having an affair all along.]
[They met five years ago? Then what was his ex-wife to him? She stayed with him through the lean years, just to be replaced by a mistress.]
[Is Fiona actually his secret daughter? She actually does look a bit like him...]
[Hawthorne Holdings is doomed. A leader who can't even keep his personal life straight is going to run the company into the ground sooner or later.]
[I feel for his ex-wife. She helped him build the company from the ground up only to be kicked to the curb.]
[Isn't Grace that fake socialite from the Winston family? Getting a guy like Matthew while being a divorced single mom, she's clearly got some tricks up her sleeve.]
Public opinion was overwhelmingly one-sided.
The Hawthorne PR team was frantically trying to push down the trending topics, delete comments, and issue official statements. But it was no use.
Netizens' wild imaginations knew no bounds. The more they tried to suppress it, the backlash just got worse.
By eight that night, the scandal was officially out of control. Hawthorne Holdings' stock price began to tank right alongside the rumors.
I watched the numbers flicker across the screen and smirked coldly.
Matthew, you're using the empire I helped you build to pave the way for your "true love." Then, I'll just collect some interest on that debt myself.
I booted up my laptop and logged into several anonymous brokerage accounts I'd prepared long ago. They were spread across different firms under offshore identities; nothing could be traced back to me.
The funds in those accounts were the "rainy day" savings I'd scraped together over the last five years, along with the inheritance my father had left me before he passed.
I hadn't touched a dime of it until today.
I entered the Hawthorne Holdings ticker and started placing orders. The price was still falling, from an opening of 78 dollars a share down to 75, 72, 70 dollars...
I wasn't in any rush. I bought in slowly. Every time the price dipped, I scooped up more. The harder it crashed, the more I bought.
By the time the market closed, Hawthorne Holdings had plummeted to 65 dollars a share. Nearly a billion dollars in market value had gone up in smoke.
Meanwhile, my anonymous accounts had quietly snapped up 3% of the company's floating shares. It wasn't a majority stake, but it was more than enough to give Matthew a nasty surprise when the time was right.
I looked at the growing numbers in my accounts and sneered.
Matthew, we're just getting started.