Chapter 9 - The Smear Campaign
Exiled from the mansion with only the clothes on their backs and a few suitcases retrieved from the garage under armed guard, Beatrice and Mason retreated to a cheap extended-stay motel on the outskirts of Phoenix.
The room smelled of stale disinfectant and industrial carpet. For Beatrice, who had spent the last five years sleeping on thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, it was the ultimate degradation.
“We can't let her get away with this!” Beatrice hissed, pacing the cramped room while Chloe sat on the unmade bed, furiously scrolling through her phone. “Look at me! My back is in spasms! My reputation in Paradise Valley is ruined! The ladies at the garden club saw the police cars!”
Chloe looked up, her eyes gleaming with venom. “Then let’s ruin hers.”
Mason, sitting at the laminate desk with a bottle of cheap beer, looked over. “What do you mean, Chloe?”
“Valerie lives for her reputation,” Chloe said, tapping the screen. “Her company works with international clients. They have strict corporate governance codes, right? What happens if the whole world finds out that Valerie Thorne is an elder-abusing, heartless corporate monster who abandoned her elderly, disabled mother-in-law on the street?”
Beatrice stopped pacing. Her eyes widened. “Can we do that?”
“Mom, social media eats this stuff up,” Chloe said, a vicious smile spreading across her lips. “I have forty thousand followers on Instagram. We take a picture of you right now. No makeup. Looking frail. We show the bruise on your arm where you fell. We write an open letter about how Valerie manipulated you, stole your family heirlooms, threw you out without your heart medication, and had you falsely arrested to cover up her own abuse.”
“What about the security footage?” Mason warned, a flicker of anxiety in his chest. “She has that camera.”
“She won't release it,” Chloe scoffed dismissively. “Corporate executives hate airing dirty laundry in public. It damages their brand. Once the public starts blasting Meridian Logistics on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, Valerie’s board of directors will force her to settle just to make it go away! She’ll write us a massive check, drop the criminal charges, and give us our allowances back!”
Beatrice sat beside Chloe on the bed, instantly slouching her shoulders, messing up her hair, and pulling down the collar of her blouse to expose a faint, yellowish discoloration on her shoulder from where she had bumped the table the day before.
“Take the picture, Chloe,” Beatrice said, forcing tears into her eyes. “Make sure you get my trembling hands.”
By 8:00 PM, the post went live across Facebook, Instagram, and local community groups:
*“THE DARK TRUTH BEHIND THE CORPORATE MASK: How Meridian Logistics Director Valerie Thorne abused, starved, and violently evicted her 62-year-old widowed mother-in-law.”*
Within two hours, the post had five thousand shares. By midnight, it had crossed fifty thousand. The comments were a wall of outrage, calling for Valerie’s firing, her arrest, and the boycotting of Meridian Logistics.
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In the dingy motel room, Beatrice and Chloe toasted their plastic cups of cheap wine, convinced they had won the war.
***