Chapter 5
1517words
The air reeked of stale alcohol and something far worse—the sickening stench of his own humiliation.
He stumbled downstairs barefoot, expecting the usual deferential greeting from the staff. Instead, he found his father Victor's golf club stopping just short of breaking his nose.
"You goddamn fool!" Victor Shaw might be pushing seventy, but his presence remained formidable. His voice thundered through the mansion, "Look what you've done! For a woman we discarded months ago, you've turned yourself—and this family—into a laughingstock!"
Alexander didn't flinch. He didn't even blink, just stared blankly at his father's rage-contorted face. His phone lay shattered on the marble floor, its screen still displaying Shaw Industries' plummeting stock chart alongside headlines that dripped with mockery.
"Sixty billion wiped out overnight! SIXTY BILLION!" Victor roared, jabbing the club at his son's chest. "The board members are calling me directly! They're asking if my heir has lost his mind over some woman! How am I supposed to face them?"
Each word landed like a sledgehammer on Alexander's already fractured pride. He had lost completely—in public opinion, in the markets, and now in his father's estimation. For the first time in his life, he was a total failure.
"And what about Sophia Sullivan? The Universal Group partnership that took years to build—you've destroyed it single-handedly! You've brought shame to the Shaw name!"
Victor's tirade continued, but Alexander barely registered the words. His ears rang, mind replaying last night's humiliation on loop—Olivia's icy contempt, Lucas Reed's calm intervention, his own pathetic, drunken desperation. These images merged with his father's rage, the financial disaster, and the public ridicule into a suffocating nightmare from which he couldn't escape.
After what seemed like eternity, he finally spoke, his voice a raw scrape: "Father, I know I've failed."
"Now you admit it? Too damn late!" Victor snorted, lowering the club, disappointment etched in every line of his face. "Fix things with Sophia Sullivan immediately! As for that Woods woman… money failed, force backfired spectacularly. Clean up your own mess!"
With that, Victor slammed the club against the floor with a crack that echoed through the mansion, then stormed out, the door slamming behind his rigid silhouette.
In the vast, empty living room, Alexander stood alone. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he sank onto the leather sofa, a hollow shell of the man he'd been yesterday. Morning sunlight flooded through the windows, bathing him in golden light that couldn't touch the frozen core within him.
He had lost. Completely. Utterly.
Jealousy, rage, regret… these emotions writhed inside him like venomous serpents, tearing him apart from within.
Meanwhile, across town, Harbor City basked in perfect autumn weather—crystalline skies, gentle breezes carrying the sweet scent of osmanthus blossoms. Even this city of ruthless commerce seemed to have softened for this momentous occasion.
Today, Flourish Group would ring the opening bell at NASDAQ.
Morning light poured through the vast glass walls of the trading floor, illuminating faces bright with anticipation. At center stage stood Olivia in a flawlessly tailored ivory suit, radiating quiet confidence. Beside her, Lucas Reed watched with undisguised admiration, his dark suit a perfect complement to her light one.
Camera flashes created a constellation around her—the woman who'd engineered a business miracle in just twelve months. On the massive digital display, Flourish's stock price rocketed skyward the instant trading began, the bright green numbers sending electric excitement through the crowd.
"Congratulations, Ms. Woods! Flourish's turnaround is being called the most spectacular revival in consumer goods history!" A financial reporter thrust a microphone toward her, barely containing his excitement. "Everyone's dying to know—how did you transform a failing heritage brand into an industry leader in just one year?"
Olivia smiled modestly, her voice clear and measured: "I simply helped Flourish remember what it was meant to be all along. Quality, innovation, and genuine respect for consumers. That's not a miracle—it's just good business."
As she finished speaking, the massive screen behind her switched unexpectedly to a video. The audience assumed it would be standard congratulatory messages from partners, but when the first frame appeared, the room fell into stunned silence, followed by audible gasps.
On screen was the CEO of Goldman Sachs himself, seated in his corner office overlooking Manhattan, wearing his famous calculating smile.
"On behalf of Goldman Sachs, congratulations to Flourish on this spectacular IPO. More importantly, I want to personally congratulate my old friend and the investor I most admire—Echo. Once again, you've shown the world what strategic brilliance truly looks like."
Echo!
The name hit the room like a bomb. Every finance professional present inhaled sharply. Echo—Wall Street's ghost, the strategic genius who'd remained faceless for years while engineering some of the most brilliant market plays in history—was this poised woman standing before them?
Before anyone could recover, the video cut to the Louvre's director, the Mona Lisa visible behind him.
"On behalf of the Louvre, I extend profound gratitude to Ms. Olivia Woods for her extraordinary contributions to art preservation," the director said in accented English. "Her anonymous funding of the Renaissance Treasures Project has saved countless masterpieces from oblivion. We also pay tribute to the shadow mentor who discovered and nurtured talents like Ethan Chen—our esteemed Professor Woods."
If the first revelation was shocking, this one left the audience utterly speechless. The notoriously difficult artistic genius Ethan Chen was her protégé? The mysterious benefactor behind major art restoration projects worldwide was her?
Next came testimonials from UNICEF, the director of an African conservation organization, the founder of the largest education fund for girls in rural Asia—one after another, leaders in their fields appeared, all thanking one person: Olivia Woods.
The legendary Echo of Wall Street, the shadow patron of the art world, the anonymous force behind global humanitarian efforts…
All of Olivia's carefully maintained separate identities were revealed at once, in the most dramatic and public way possible.
She wasn't just a successful businesswoman. She was a financial kingmaker who shaped markets with strategic brilliance, a cultural guardian who nurtured artistic genius, and a compassionate force who quietly changed countless lives through targeted philanthropy.
Reporters went into a frenzy, cameras clicking madly to capture this historic moment. They recognized they were witnessing the birth of a new kind of icon—a woman whose influence transcended industries and whose impact would define an era.
Meanwhile, at an exclusive afternoon tea hosted by one of Harbor City's elite socialites, the atmosphere was so thick with tension you could cut it with a knife.
On a massive projection screen, the NASDAQ broadcast played in real-time. The very same women who had once mocked and dismissed Olivia sat frozen, teacups suspended midair, their faces cycling through an impressive spectrum of colors—from flushed embarrassment to ghostly pale shock to sickly green envy.
"My God… she's… she's actually Echo?" One woman nearly dropped her Limoges teacup, her voice quavering with disbelief.
"And that art foundation! I called in every favor I had trying to get one of Ethan Chen's pieces for my son's birthday. And to think, the woman who could have made one phone call was sitting right here at our tables…" Another woman buried her face in her hands.
"I… I literally said she looked like a waitress once. Right to her face. I'm such an idiot!"
Their past group chat messages flashed through their minds like a series of slaps. That bet they'd made about her crawling back within three months now seemed like a cosmic joke at their expense.
"Eating crow" didn't begin to describe their current emotional state. It was a complex cocktail of jealousy, regret, and the humbling realization that they'd been utterly outclassed in every conceivable way.
Sophia Sullivan sat at the head of the table, her face a perfect mask as she stared at the triumphant woman on screen.
She'd once imagined herself and Olivia as rivals for Alexander's affection, only to realize with crushing clarity that Olivia had never considered her competition at all. They hadn't even been playing the same game.
The high-society drama that had entertained Harbor City's elite for over a year reached its climax in a way no one could have predicted—with the complete unmasking of Olivia Woods as someone far beyond their petty machinations.
All the self-important players in their little drama had been reduced to mere spectators, while the woman they'd underestimated took her rightful place on the global stage.
Olivia smiled warmly at the audience, speaking as much to her past self as to the watching world.
"I hope every woman with dreams and talent never surrenders her potential because of gender, background, or external obstacles," she said, her gaze both fierce and compassionate. "I walked through my own darkness, and it was knowledge and purpose that gave me the strength to emerge. Now, I want to be that guiding light for others still finding their way."
In that moment, standing at the epicenter of global attention with countless stars in her wake and limitless possibilities ahead, the age of Olivia Woods had officially begun.
