All Chapters of The Consortium Behind Your Collapse: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
12 chapters
The Boardroom Humiliation
Julian Blackwood knew something was wrong the moment he stepped into the Adam Industries headquarters.The receptionist who usually greeted him with polite smiles couldn't meet his eyes. Security guards who normally nodded in acknowledgment suddenly found their shoes fascinating. Even the lobby felt colder than usual, and the silence pressed against his eardrums like water at the bottom of an ocean.He checked his phone again, gazing at Eleanor's text from the morning.“Board meeting at 2 PM. Be there.”Julian tugged at the collar of his button-down shirt and straightened his slacks. The elevator ride to the fifteenth floor felt eternal. When the doors finally opened, Julian stepped into the executive corridor where the walls were lined with portraits of Adam patriarchs staring down with expressions of cold judgment. He'd walked this hallway a hundred times in three years of marriage, but today it felt like walking toward a gallows.The boardroom doors stood open. Inside, he could se
Last Updated : 2025-12-26
The Slap Heard Round the Room
The divorce papers felt heavier than they should have.Julian stared down at the folder Raymond had shoved into his hands. His name was already typed in. Eleanor's signature line waited blank and accusatory. The settlement terms were buried somewhere in the middle, but Julian already knew what they would say."Open it." Raymond's voice cut through the suffocating silence of the boardroom. "I want you to see exactly how generous we're being by not throwing you in a cell."Julian's fingers moved to the folder's edge, but something made him stop. Maybe it was the way every shareholder leaned forward like vultures waiting for roadkill. Or maybe it was Victoria's phone aimed at him like a weapon, her smile too wide and cruel. "What's wrong, Julian?" Raymond circled around the conference table slowly."Having second thoughts or worried about what happens when the world finds out you're a thief?""I'm not a thief." Julian kept his voice level despite the rage building in his chest. "Those do
Last Updated : 2025-12-26
The Signature and the Smirk
The divorce papers lay scattered across the boardroom floor like the remains of something that's already dead.Julian stared down at them, feeling the warm trickle of blood from his split lip slide down his chin and splatter onto the crisp white documents. The red drops bloomed across Eleanor's typed name, turning her signature line into something that looked like a crime scene.Raymond stood over him, chest heaving, fists still clenched at his sides. Waiting. The entire room held its breath, waiting for Julian to sign the papers. Julian bent down slowly and picked up the papers. He walked to the conference table and set the papers down carefully, smoothing out the creases. Around the table, the shareholders leaned forward like vultures circling roadkill, their relief so palpable that Julian could taste it underneath the copper tang of his own blood.Victor Adam sat at the head of the table with his hands folded, watching Julian. Eleanor sat three seats down, her gaze fixed on some i
Last Updated : 2025-12-26
The Viral Humiliation
The subway air tasted like rust and wet concrete. Julian Blackwood stood on the platform as the train screeched away, leaving him in the fluorescent-lit tunnel that connected to the street level. His shirt clung to his skin, still damp from the rain, and the dried blood on his collar had stiffened into a dark crust that pulled at his neck every time he moved.His phone had been buzzing for the past twenty minutes. Relentless. Angry. Like a hornet's nest someone had kicked over and left him to deal with.He pulled it from his pocket as he climbed the stairs toward street level. The screen lit up with notification after notification, each one stacking on top of the last until the numbers became meaningless. Forty-three missed calls. Sixty-seven text messages. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, every platform he had ever signed up for was drowning in activity.Julian stopped halfway up the stairs. He opened Twitter first.The trending page loaded, and there it was. Third item down,
Last Updated : 2025-12-26
The First Reversal
Julian watched the floor numbers tick downward on the digital display above the doors. Ground level. Sublevel 1. Sublevel 2. The elevator didn't stop until it reached sublevel 3, the lowest level of the facility, where the premium units were housed.The doors opened, and Julian stepped into a different world.Julian's footsteps echoed softly as he walked down the hallway. The corridor stretched ahead of him, lined with heavy steel doors. Each door had a number plate mounted beside it, brushed steel with engraved digits that caught the light.Unit 347 was at the end of the hallway.The door was heavier than the others, reinforced steel that looked like it could withstand a small explosion. Beside it, mounted at shoulder height, was a biometric scanner. The screen glowed a soft blue, waiting.Julian placed his right palm against the scanner.The device hummed to life. A line of red light swept across his hand, reading the unique pattern of ridges and valleys that marked his palm print a
Last Updated : 2025-12-26
The Penthouse Eviction
The Meridian Towers stood like a glass cathedral against the morning sky, thirty-seven floors of steel and tinted windows that caught the sunlight and threw it back in waves of gold. Julian had walked past this building a thousand times in three years.Today, he walked through the front entrance like a stranger.He made it exactly seven steps inside before a security guard stood in front of him. The man was new, someone Julian had never seen before. "Stop right there." The guard's hand went up, palm out, like Julian was a dog that needed training. His name tag read Daniel in letters that gleamed under the lobby lights.Julian stopped. "I'm here to collect my belongings from the penthouse.""The penthouse." Daniel said, looking at him from head to toe. "You're Julian Blackwood."It wasn't a question, but Julian nodded anyway.“We've been instructed not to let criminals in here."The word landed in the lobby like a stone dropped into water. Conversations at the reception desk stopped m
Last Updated : 2025-12-26
The Fall of the Empire
The coffee shop smelled of burnt espresso and broken dreams.Julian sat in the corner booth with a view of the television mounted above the counter, nursing his third cup of black coffee. The liquid had gone cold an hour earlier, but he kept the cup close, a distraction for his hands while the world tore him apart on live television."Breaking news," the anchor announced, her voice sharp. "Adam Industries holds an emergency press conference regarding the embezzlement scandal involving one of the city's most prominent families."Julian’s phone vibrated on the table. Another call. He didn’t bother looking at the screen anymore. Fourteen missed calls in the past hour—former clients, colleagues, and friends—all demanding answers.The television cut to a wide shot of the Adam Industries headquarters. The same building Julian had been expelled from yesterday now served as the backdrop for his public downfall. A podium stood at the center, flanked by corporate flags and the Adam family crest
Last Updated : 2026-01-07
The Final Settlement
The knock came precisely at 9:47 a.m., sharp and impatient, as if whoever was on the other side had already decided Julian wasn’t worth their time.Julian had been awake for three hours. Sleep had become a rarity, a luxury reserved for those whose faces weren’t plastered across news channels with the word "FRAUD" stamped underneath. He spent the early morning reading comments online, watching his reputation burn in real time, one hashtag at a time.The knock came again, harder this time.Julian crossed the motel room in four steps and opened the door.The man in the hallway looked like he’d been assembled in a factory producing corporate sharks. Mid-fifties, silver hair slicked back. His briefcase was leather, Italian, and his Rolex reflected the fluorescent hallway light."Julian Blackwood?" The man’s voice matched his appearance."That’s me.""Harrison Webb. I represent Elean
Last Updated : 2026-01-08
Betrayal in the Digital Age
The article went live at 6:32 a.m., timed precisely to catch the morning commute when people scrolled through their phones with coffee in one hand and judgment in the other.Julian saw it because his phone wouldn't stop buzzing. Thirty-seven notifications in five minutes, each one a digital knife piercing his ribs. He sat in a twenty-four-hour diner. He’d been there since midnight, unable to sleep, unable to stop refreshing news feeds that kept finding new ways to dissect his character.The top notification was from the New York Tribune: “EXCLUSIVE: ‘I Knew Julian Blackwood Was a Fraud’ – A Former Friend Speaks Out.”Julian’s thumb hovered over the link. He knew he shouldn’t open it. Nothing good awaited on the other side of that headline. But his impulse made him tap on the screen.The article loaded, and Julian’s stomach dropped.The byline read: Lucas Brennan.For a moment, Julian couldn’t breathe. The diner sounds faded into white noise—the clatter of dishes, the hiss of the gridd
Last Updated : 2026-01-09
Julian Blackwood At His Lowest
The address Ethan sent arrived at 11:47 PM, just thirteen minutes before Julian was supposed to be there.Julian stood on a street corner in the financial district, reading the coordinates on his phone while rain hammered down around him. The location was precise to the meter, leading him to a building he'd walked past a hundred times without noticing.There was no sign. No company name. Just a single brass number plate beside heavy glass doors: 47.Julian pushed through the entrance into a lobby that felt more like a vault than a waiting room. A security desk sat empty, but the cameras tracking his movement were anything but unmanned. He could feel them cataloging his face, cross-referencing databases, confirming his identity against whatever clearance list Ethan had compiled.The elevator at the far end of the lobby opened before Julian reached it.He stepped inside, and the doors closed. There were no buttons. No floor selection panel. Just steel walls that reflected Julian's rain-
Last Updated : 2026-01-10