Part 3: The Silent Transaction
Arthur laughed, though it was tight and nervous.
“What are you doing?” he asked, eyeing me suspiciously as I typed quickly on my phone. “Calling an Uber? Make sure you pick the pool option to save cash.”
“No,” I answered, not looking up. “I’m logging into the admin portal of Nebula Pay.”
Arthur blinked. “Nebula? The payment processor? What, do you have an account there?”
“I don’t have an account, Arthur,” I said, glancing up. “I have the admin keys.”
I tapped a few commands, and the interface shifted from a standard app view to a complex dashboard filled with live data streams, transaction volumes, and liquidity charts.
“You see,” I said, turning the phone toward him, “You called my company a ‘little laptop business.’ But Nebula Pay processes forty percent of the global B2B transactions in the manufacturing sector. Including yours.”
Arthur squinted at the screen. He saw the logo, the live feed of transactions, and then, at the top right corner, he saw the name:
USER: SOPHIA VANCE // ROLE: FOUNDER & CEO
“Vance?” Arthur whispered. “I thought your last name was Miller.”
“Miller is my mother’s name,” I replied coolly. “I use it socially to avoid people like you. People who only care about my net worth. But professionally? I am Sophia Vance. And I built Nebula Pay from a dorm room into a ten-billion-dollar unicorn.”
The room went deathly silent. Even Eleanor stopped chewing her salad.
“Ten… billion?” Arthur stammered, his voice barely audible.
“Ten point four, as of the market close today,” I corrected him. “Which makes my personal net worth about… oh, fifty times yours.”
Arthur slumped back in his chair, looking like he had been physically struck. But he was a bully, and bullies don’t go down without a fight. He grasped at the nearest straw.
“So what?” he sneered, trying to regain his composure. “So you’re rich. Congratulations. That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want you in my family. Money is new, Sophia. Class is forever. And you don’t have class.”
“I’m not interested in your class, Arthur,” I said, tapping another section on my screen. “I’m interested in your debt.”
“My debt?”
“Yes. You see, this morning, my board approved a strategic acquisition. Nebula Pay bought a controlling stake in a regional lending institution to expand our credit services.”
I turned the phone back toward him. A logo appeared on the screen.
RIVER CITY BANK
Arthur’s face turned pale. “River City… that’s my bank. That’s where my commercial loans are.”
“Correction,” I said, my tone icy. “That’s where they were. Now, they belong to me.”
I tapped a red folder icon labeled STERLING INDUSTRIES.
“According to this,” I read aloud, “Sterling Industries currently holds forty million dollars in revolving credit lines and term loans with River City Bank. And look at this…”
I zoomed in on a clause in the contract.
“There’s a ‘Change of Control’ provision. It states that if the ownership of the bank changes, the new owner has the right to review all high-risk loans and demand immediate repayment if the borrower’s character is deemed… unstable.”
I looked up at Arthur. His face was ashen.
“And Arthur,” I said, glancing at the pieces of the torn check floating in my wine glass. “I’d say throwing trash at a woman in a restaurant indicates highly unstable character. Wouldn’t you?”
