

To defuse the bomb strapped to the hostage, I had no choice—I cut off all her clothes. My clueless new wife, Dana Poole, blasted it online. She cried as she faced me. "Why not at least leave her underwear on? You were saving her, I get it—but did you have to take everything? Doesn't a girl's dignity matter? With cameras everywhere, how is she supposed to live after this? You couldn't even cover her up?" The backlash exploded. The unit benched me to calm things down. So I stopped caring. I followed procedure, no improvising, no extra effort. Then one day, at the busiest mall in the city, Dana's mom got strapped into a brand-new linked bomb. This time, the whole unit panicked.

"The new intern angrily called me out in front of the entire executive team at the quarterly meeting.“Please look at the hard evidence. For the past three months, Caroline has been absent from the office for over twenty hours a week.""""And here is a record of her squandering company funds.We need to let her go right now and save the company's cash flow."" She had no idea that my ""absences"" were spent leveraging my family's three-generation network to woo billionaire investors for this tiny company. Behind those outrageously expensive bills were partnership agreements worth tens of millions of dollars and the hospital bills from countless nights of drinking with clients until my stomach gave out. Claude,the CEO of this company, was my Ivy League classmate. He knew the truth. However, he just stared at me coldly.""Caroline, what's your explanation for the absences and expenses Lia has presented?"""