As he left the room, Sloan noticed an open email on a nearby screen revealing that Reed had already drafted her chief executive announcement, complete with a clause quietly granting himself full control over the company's finances the moment the board approved the deal. Reed met with Sloan privately and admitted almost casually that he had used her account, describing it as a necessary formality to close the deal on schedule, rather than any kind of betrayal. He told her that every successful executive eventually had to accept uncomfortable decisions, insisting that 2,000 jobs in Denver were a small price to pay for building a global enterprise. He promised that once she became chief executive, she could quietly restore a portion of those jobs, so long as she overlooked the current irregularities and convinced her father to remove Bennett from the negotiating table. He leaned back in his leather chair as he spoke entirely at ease, as though the conversation were nothing more than a routine negotiation between colleagues who understood how business truly worked behind closed doors.
Sloan sat across from him with her hands folded tightly in her lap, remembering all the years he had mentored her, praised her instincts, and championed her promotions in front of the board. And it sickened her to realize how much of that mentorship had simply been an investment in a puppet he intended to control. Sloan realized with a chill that Reed was using her own ambition as a leash, steering her toward decisions she would never have made with clear eyes. At almost the same moment, a photograph from the charity dinner reached the press, framing Bennett as a struggling laborer who had tried to pursue the Whittaker heiress above his station. The video of Sloan declaring him too poor to date her was leaked as well, though the footage of Bennett's dignified silent departure had been carefully cut out.
Anchors on the evening broadcasts debated whether wealth and class still mattered in modern boardrooms, using Sloan's own words as the centerpiece of their segments, while business commentators questioned whether Whittaker Aero Systems could survive the reputational damage on top of an already fragile merger. Reed believed the scandal would push Bennett to withdraw from company affairs to protect his privacy, while public opinion instead turned sharply against Sloan for her arrogance. Board members worried the controversy would damage the company's reputation, and several urged a delay in confirming her promotion until the story quieted down. News outlets replayed the clip throughout the day, framing it beside old photographs of Sloan at galas and award dinners, building a narrative of a spoiled heiress with little regard for people beneath her station. Reporters camped outside the headquarters lobby, and for the first time in her career, Sloan understood what it felt like to be reduced to a single moment stripped of context.
The exact kind of reduction she had once inflicted on Bennett without a second thought. Suspecting Bennett had leaked the footage out of revenge, Sloan went to his temporary office and confronted him outright. He showed her his phone, revealing that his own assistant had suggested publicly disclosing his true net worth to reverse the narrative, and that Bennett had refused. He did not want the story to become one where Sloan was only wrong because she had insulted a billionaire, since by his reasoning she would have been just as wrong if he truly earned nothing more than minimum wage. That single sentence struck at the heart of her mistake more than any accusation could have.