Chapter 2 - The Actuarial Table
By 8:00 AM on Monday, my Manhattan apartment smelled of ozone, sterile medical dressings, and cold rain.
Marcus Vance arrived wearing an unbuttoned charcoal cashmere coat over a tailored three-piece navy suit that cost more than my first two years of college tuition. He was fifty-four years old, with silver hair cropped close to an austere, angular skull, and the cold, unhurried posture of a man who had spent three decades taking corporate raiders apart on cross-examination. He didn't offer a platitude. He didn't ask how I was feeling. He set an ostrich-skin briefcase on my kitchen island, unlatched the brass locks with two sharp, mechanical clicks, and laid three manila folders on the quartz counter.
"The criminal referral has cleared the Westchester County District Attorney's office," Marcus said, pulling a gold Montblanc pen from his vest. "Detective Miller presented the physical evidence to the duty magistrate in White Plains at six-thirty this morning. The crystal tumbler, the stained linen napkin, and the chemical remnants extracted from your silk gown."
"And the forensic report?" I asked, sitting across from him in my office chair, a fresh ice pack pressed lightly against the gauze wrapping my neck.
"Undiluted trichloroacetic acid, forty-four point eight percent," Marcus recited without reading from his notes. "Sufficient to dissolve synthetic fibers, etch the surface of unglazed porcelain, and produce permanent third-degree chemical burns on human dermal tissue within twelve seconds of sustained contact. The prosecutor assigned to the case is Katherine Bell. She doesn't like influencers. She likes aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a mandatory minimum of five to fifteen years in Bedford Hills."
"What about my mother?"
Marcus looked at me over his glasses. His eyes were the color of stagnant river water. "Under New York Penal Law, Section 215.40: Tampering with physical evidence. Class E felony. When Sibil Ward grabbed that napkin and scrubbed your face, she wasn't providing first aid; she was actively destroying biological and chemical evidence while a recording device was operated under her direct operational supervision. The video footage clearly shows her looking at the lead cameraman and nodding before she wiped your cheek."
"She wanted the blood off before the light hit the sensor," I said. "A bloodied face gets flagged by the platform’s automated moderation filters for graphic violence. If the algorithm flags the post, the monetization drops by eighty percent."
Marcus didn't smile, but a thin, cruel crease appeared at the edge of his mouth. "An actuary to the bone, Sloan."
"Numbers are the only thing in my family that never lied to me, Marcus."
I turned my laptop screen toward him.
"Here is the asset breakdown for Fallon Ward and Ward Media LLC," I said, pointing the laser cursor at the three-tiered flowchart I had spent Sunday night constructing. "Fallon’s public persona is built on a facade of seven-figure solvency. She posts from a leased penthouse in Williamsburg, she drives a Porsche Macan on an open-ended dealership loaner contract, and she claims three hundred thousand in brand partnerships."
"And the balance sheet?"
"She has twenty-two thousand dollars in liquid checking," I said, scrolling to the third tab. "She has seventy-eight thousand in unsecured credit card debt across four Chase Sapphire accounts. Her LLC has an outstanding merchant cash advance with an interest rate of thirty-two percent, and her production company has not paid its quarterly estimated state taxes since October of twenty-twenty-two."
Marcus leaned forward, his interest sharpening. "And the wedding?"
"The wedding cost two hundred and forty thousand dollars," I said. "Miles, her new husband, is twenty-six. He’s the son of an automotive parts distributor from Paramus. His father gave him an eighty-thousand-dollar trust distribution as a wedding gift. Fallon took that eighty thousand, used it as a down payment for the venue and the caterer, and told the vendors that the remaining one hundred and sixty thousand would be settled via post-event commercial sponsorships that were contingent upon the wedding video hitting three million organic views within forty-eight hours of publication."
"She needed the engagement," Marcus murmured.
"She didn't just need it; she was contractually obligated to provide it," I said, pulling up a copy of a master endorsement agreement with Velour Skin International, a cosmetics conglomerate based in New Jersey. "Look at paragraph 14-B. If Fallon’s wedding-related content failed to achieve a minimum engagement ratio of four-point-two percent across two platforms by Tuesday noon, Velour’s ninety-thousand-dollar title sponsorship was voidable at the company's discretion. If that sponsorship was voided, the checks she wrote to the florist, the lighting technicians, and the conservatory venue would bounce by Wednesday morning."
"So she planned a catastrophe," Marcus said. "A dramatic, unscripted domestic feud between sisters. The perfect viral catalyst."
"She thought it was a fifteen percent peel," I said, my voice dropping into an arctic register that made the room feel suddenly unheated. "Sutton told Greer that Fallon told Chloe Miller to mix 'something that will make her turn red and cry on camera.' But Chloe was angry at Fallon for a late payment on an old cosmetic balance, and Fallon was too stupid to read the concentration label on the compounding bottle. She threw four ounces of chemical death at my eyes because she needed to pay for her imported roses."
Marcus closed the folder with a dry, leather snap.
"What is your objective, Sloan?" he asked. "The criminal case will proceed regardless of what you do. The state will take its pound of flesh. But you didn't hire me to watch a district attorney file motions."
I looked out my window, watching the rain beat against the glass of the neighboring office towers.
"I don't want an apology," I said. "I don't want a tearful reconciliation video filmed in my mother's sunroom with soft lighting and a link to a domestic violence charity. I want to liquidate them. I want to take the LLC, the production rights, the agency contracts, the Lake Forest house, and every single dollar my mother spent fifty years siphoning out of my father’s estate. I want to balance the ledger until their names don't even qualify for a credit card at Target."
Marcus stood up, adjusted his cuffs, and took his overcoat off the back of the chair.
"The initial civil complaint will be filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York at eleven o'clock," he said. "We are seeking twelve million in exemplary damages, an immediate freezing order on all domestic and corporate accounts associated with Ward Media, and an emergency subpoena for the server archives of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube."
He walked to the door, paused, and looked back at my bandaged face.
"And Sloan?"
May you like
"Yes?"
"Don't change the dressing before the preliminary injunction hearing tomorrow," he said. "The judge needs to see what twenty-four hours of viral vanity looks like when the filter is turned off."
