Story code: ST-000018
Part 3: The Live Feed
The timer in the red banner ticked relentlessly. I stared at the flashing numbers. 4:48. 4:47. The heat from the broken window washed over my back like the breath of an open oven. Sweat stung my eyes, blurring the edges of the dual monitors, but my mind was suddenly crystal clear.
Publishing a raw text exposé wouldn’t work. With the master passwords resetting in less than five minutes, Chloe’s PR agency would simply regain control, delete the post within seconds, and claim her disgruntled former contractor was hacked. Then, she would bury me in litigation using the very exclusivity contract I was currently refusing to sign.
I needed something permanent. Something she couldn’t delete. Something that happened in real time, in front of an audience too large to silence.
*4:12.*
I minimized the color-corrected Mediterranean vlog and clicked over to the secondary dashboard tab. While I was sweating in my ruined office editing her scheduled content, Chloe was simultaneously hosting her weekly “Self-Made Boss Masterclass” live webinar. Over twenty thousand paying subscribers were tuned in, including scouts from her major corporate sponsors. Because I was her technical director and she refused to pay for professional studio management, the entire live stream routed directly through the broadcasting software on my desktop before hitting her platform’s servers.
Through my frayed desktop speakers, Chloe’s voice chimed in crisp, high-definition audio. She was sitting in her climate-controlled home studio three doors down, wearing the exact same silk blazer she’d worn when she casually slapped the HOA fine onto my keyboard.
“It’s all about mindset, guys,” Chloe was saying, gesturing gracefully to the camera. “When I bought my first property, I didn’t have a safety net. I just had sheer grit. You have to eliminate distractions and cut out people who drain your energy. Success is a choice. Poverty is a choice.”
*3:35.*
My hands hovered over the keyboard. My fingers were shaking so hard my knuckles ached. I opened our encrypted master cloud drive. Since I was her ghostwriter, editor, and personal assistant, I handled the filing for absolutely everything in her life. She never even looked at the backend folders, trusting me to quietly manage the unglamorous reality of her fake empire.
I bypassed the social media assets and clicked straight into the legal and financial directory. I pulled up two specific PDF files I had archived last tax season. The first was the deed to her sprawling Oak Creek property and the associated ‘Kensington Family Revocable Trust’ disbursement logs. The second was the freshly uploaded Oak Creek HOA Master Ledger she had proudly emailed me last night to prove she was officially the president of the board.
*2:50.*
“We have a question from Sarah in the chat,” Chloe said smoothly, her white teeth gleaming on my left monitor. “Sarah asks, ‘How do you handle unexpected financial setbacks?’ Oh, Sarah, I love this question. You have to pivot. You can’t let a bill or an unfair fine ruin your momentum. You manifest the capital. You don’t make excuses.”
I dragged the Kensington Trust PDF into my broadcasting software, creating a brand new media source layer on top of her camera feed. Then I dragged the HOA extortion ledger right beneath it.
*1:45.*
I quickly cropped the trust document so the highlighted sections were impossible to miss. The text clearly outlined the outright cash purchase of her home by her parents, alongside the $25,000 monthly trust fund deposits explicitly labeled ‘Chloe Living Stipend.’
I looked down at the shattered glass of my window frame glittering on the cheap linoleum floor. I looked at the three-day eviction notice curled on my desk in the sweltering, stagnant air. Then I looked at the red banner ticking down at the top of her dashboard.
*1:12.*
My index finger rested on the hotkey assigned to switch the live broadcast scene.
“You just have to hold yourself accountable,” Chloe said, looking directly into her camera lens, projecting perfect, manufactured empathy. “No one is going to hand you your empire. You have to build it yourself.”
I pressed the hotkey.
On the live feed monitor, Chloe’s face instantly shrank down to a tiny picture-in-picture box in the bottom right corner. The main screen was immediately replaced by the Kensington Family Revocable Trust document, displayed in razor-sharp 4K resolution.
*0:58.*
There was a three-second delay between my broadcasting software and the public live feed. I watched Chloe’s face in the tiny box. She was still smiling, oblivious, taking a delicate sip from her iced matcha latte.
Then, she glanced at her return monitor to check the chat.
Her smile froze. The matcha glass stopped halfway back to her desk, hovering in mid-air.
The webinar chat window on my right monitor erupted. A cascading waterfall of question marks and confused comments scrolled by so fast the text became a gray blur.
*Wait, her parents bought the house?*
*What is a 25k monthly living stipend?!*
*I thought she was broke at 22?*
*Is this a joke?*
Chloe’s eyes darted frantically around her screen. Her perfect, relaxed posture completely collapsed. “Uh, guys, it looks like we’re having a technical glitch,” she stammered, her voice pitching up in genuine panic. She reached off-camera, aggressively tapping her mouse. “My, um, my editor is fixing it.”
*0:35.*
I hit the spacebar, triggering the next source layer.
The trust document vanished, instantly replaced by the HOA ledger. I had already highlighted the two rows that mattered. The first row showed her newly enacted nine-hundred-dollar fine structure for “aesthetic violations.” The second row was my name, my address, and the automated withdrawal of my rent money, followed by a note in her own handwriting from the scan: *Use this to cover the new studio lighting.*
The chat exploded again, the speed of the text doubling.
*Did she just steal from her own employee?*
*HOA extortion to buy lights?*
*FRAUD.*
*Cancel her.*
*0:15.*
“Sam!” Chloe’s voice shrieked through the feed, abandoning her soft, curated influencer tone entirely. Her face in the tiny box was pale and twisted with pure rage. “Sam, turn it off! Turn it off right now!”
My phone lit up on the desk. Chloe’s name flashed across the screen. The incoming call vibrated against the wood, buzzing violently in the stifling heat of the room.
I didn’t answer. I just sat back in my chair, the sweat on my forehead cooling.
*0:05.*
Chloe was frantically mashing her keyboard on the feed, realizing she had absolutely no backend access to the broadcasting software. “I’m cutting the stream! It’s a hack! It’s a deepfake!” she yelled, but the absolute terror in her eyes confirmed every single document on the screen.
*0:01.*
The red banner flashed white. A system dialogue box popped up in the center of the dashboard: *Session Expired. You have been logged out.*
My access to her social media accounts vanished, kicking me back to a generic, blank login screen. But the broadcasting software was local to my machine. The live feed kept pushing the signal, freezing the undeniable proof of her extortion and lies in front of twenty thousand people. The chat continued to scroll at lightspeed, ripping her self-made facade to shreds, while Chloe stared helplessly into her camera, completely out of answers.