The CEO Fired Her in Front of Everyone, But He Had No Idea Who She Was
Chapter 2
Maya walked through the lobby without crying.
She refused to give the company that satisfaction.
Her security badge had already been deactivated.
Her personal belongings were placed into a cardboard box.
Seven years of her life fit inside it.
A mug.
Two notebooks.
A framed photograph of her mother.
And a small brass key.
The receptionist avoided eye contact.
Security escorted Maya outside.
Only then did she stop.
She looked back at the glass tower.
Hawthorne Industries had once meant everything to her.
Now it looked like a building she had never entered.
Her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“This is Daniel from Bennett Capital.”
Maya closed her eyes.
“Tell my father I’m fine.”
There was a pause.
“Your father asked me to tell you the board meeting has been moved to tomorrow.”
Maya frowned.
“Why?”
“Because the acquisition vote is in danger.”
She looked at the building again.
“Did he know?”
“Your father knows everything.”
Maya sighed.
“Of course he does.”
Nobody at Hawthorne knew her family owned Bennett Capital.
Nobody knew her father had been quietly acquiring shares in Hawthorne Industries for nearly three years.
Nobody knew Maya had taken the analyst position intentionally.
She had wanted to understand the company from the inside before deciding whether her family should increase its investment.
And nobody knew she had spent the previous six months investigating suspicious financial transactions.
The contract she had exposed that morning wasn’t an accident.
It was part of a much larger pattern.
Maya opened her laptop from inside the car.
She accessed the private file she’d built.
Dozens of transactions appeared.
Vendor payments.
Consulting agreements.
Acquisition expenses.
Everything connected to one senior executive.
The CFO.
Thomas Grant.
Maya had suspected him for months.
Now she knew.
He was inflating projected revenues to make the company appear healthier before the acquisition vote.
If the board approved the deal, certain insiders would make millions.
If the deal failed, Hawthorne’s stock would fall.
Either way, someone benefited.
Maya sent the evidence to her father’s legal team.
Then she received a message.
FROM UNKNOWN NUMBER.
YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT YOUR MOUTH SHUT.
Maya stared at it.
A second message arrived.
YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH.
She smiled faintly.
Maybe they didn’t know either.
That evening, Alexander Reed remained in his office.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Maya’s final sentence.
Read the final page.
He opened the report again.
The final page wasn’t a financial summary.
It was a legal ownership chart.
At the bottom was a company name.
Bennett Strategic Holdings.
Alexander frowned.
He recognized the name.
Bennett Capital.
One of the largest private investment groups in the country.
He grabbed his phone.
“Who owns Bennett Strategic Holdings?”
His legal advisor answered.
“Bennett Capital.”
Alexander’s expression changed.
“Who is the principal owner?”
There was silence.
Then the answer came.
“William Bennett.”
Alexander stopped breathing for a moment.
William Bennett.
Billionaire investor.
Founder of Bennett Capital.
And Maya Bennett’s father.
Alexander stared at the report.
“No.”
But the realization was already spreading through him.
The employee he had fired in front of his leadership team…
was the daughter of the investor who owned a controlling block of Hawthorne Industries.
