Chapter 4 - The Champagne Hangover
At 6:30 AM on Wednesday morning, sunlight broke across the Santa Monica Mountains, spilling gold across the polished concrete terraces of 1104 Sunset Ridge Road.
Julian woke with a dull throb behind his temples. He had finished the bottle of Caymus after his mother left, pacing the living room, replaying the confrontation in his head until the humiliation transformed into a toxic, glittering pride.
He rolled over, stretching his arm across the four-thousand-dollar Belgian linen sheets. Chloe was still asleep, her delicate features serene in the gray morning light, an eye mask pushed up into her highlighted blonde hair.
"Chloe," he muttered, nudging her. "Wake up. Let's get breakfast sent up from the Beverly Hills Hotel."
Chloe groaned, rolling onto her back and shielding her eyes from the sun. "Did you really have to hit her that many times, Jules? My God, the sound was disgusting. I had to scrub the floor where she dropped that hideous brass thing. It scratched the stone."
Julian sat up on the edge of the bed, running his hands through his unwashed hair. "She needed to understand. For ten years, she’s walked into my life like she owns the place. *'Arthur did this, Arthur built that, don't waste your resources.'* She's seventy years old, Chloe. Her time is up. Did you see her coat? She looked like she wandered in from a bus station."
"She’s just bitter," Chloe sighed, reaching for her phone on the nightstand. "She spent her whole life sweating around construction workers, and now she can’t stand that you make more money on a single seed round than she made pouring asphalt for five years. Order some eggs Benedict, will you? And tell them extra Hollandaise."
Julian smiled, standing up and slipping into a silk dressing gown. He grabbed his phone from the charging pad. He tapped his screen to open his mobile banking app to check his personal operating balance—a habit he performed every morning to reassure himself of his own weight in the world.
The screen loaded. Then a red dialogue box appeared:
**ERROR: 403. ACCOUNT ACCESS SUSPENDED. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR COMMERCIAL RELATIONSHIP MANAGER.**
Julian frowned, tapping the screen aggressively. "Stupid update. First Western’s tech department is a joke."
He opened his email. There were ninety-two unread messages, which was unusual for seven in the morning. The top five were marked with urgent red flags from his head of operations at the Wilshire office, David Kessler:
*7:04 AM: Julian, our payroll run failed. Automated clearing house says the master facility has been restricted.*
*7:12 AM: Building management just turned away the marketing team at the Wilshire lobby. They’re saying our master lease has been recalled by Vance Properties.*
*7:18 AM: Julian, pick up your phone. The AmEx Black cards just declined for the client lunch at Spago. What the hell is going on?*
Julian’s chest tightened, a cold needle of panic poking through the haze of his hangover. "What the..."
He dialed Kessler’s number. It rang once.
"Julian!" Kessler’s voice was borderline hysterical. "Where are you? There are two building security guards standing in our reception area right now putting yellow tape across the double doors! They’re telling us all office assets are subject to a corporate distress lien from Vance Infrastructure. I can't even get my personal laptop off my desk!"
"Shut up, David!" Julian barked, though his voice cracked slightly. "It's an accounting error. My mother probably forgot to sign some bureaucratic rollover form. She manages the backend trust. I’ll call her office right now and have Marcus clear it up."
"Julian, you don't understand," Kessler yelled over the sound of shouting voices in the background. "They gave us thirty minutes to clear out our personal effects! The bank isn't answering our calls! The whole system is dark!"
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Before Julian could answer, the electronic chime of the front gate intercom echoed through the halls of the house.
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