Mondays being a burden and a slog were a universal fact. Every culture and profession in the industrialized world looked forward to the starting of the work week with an enthusiasm equivalent to seeing a dentist. The weekend lulled and soothed, while Monday jarred the nerves awake with the abrupt disruption of relaxation only a bucket of cold water could compare. No one liked Monday – except for Jessica Gorman. The fit brunette often worked Saturdays and Sundays, viewing Mondays as opportunities to unleash whatever magic she’d concocted over the weekend onto her colleagues. While every other soul at Griffon Financial labored through reams of unread emails with squinted eyes, not yet awake from coffee in hand, they would be seeing whatever brilliance Jessica shared. She rarely failed to shine or impress. Some might have described her as dedicated, other as obsessed and without a life. Either way, Jessica threw herself into her job and was fucking good at it.<br/><br/>This particular Monday was special for Jessica, as she re-read the meeting invitation send on Saturday. The quarterly reports were posted the day before, and Dale Griffon himself wanted to meet with Jessica first thing that morning. The numbers were impressive and her portfolio margins strong – logic dictated that Jessica’s long-awaited promotion had arrived. The sense of pride from the honor of the company founder boosting her position made her smile as she strode down the hallway. The kitten heels she wore clicked with each confident stride upon the smooth terrazzo flooring. The aura of executive prestige only heightened when Jessica passed the fluted, doric columns that announced the owner’s office.<i>This is my big day!</i>she beamed, privately.<br/><br/>Jessica entered the wealthy foyer and approached Mr. Griffon’s assistant. “Hi, Jessica,” the woman said softly. “Why don’t you have a seat? Mr. Griffon will be with your shortly.” Jessica should have picked up on the impersonal way she was dismissed, or the lack of eye contact. Regardless, Jessica did as she was bid and sat while tapping at her corporate smart phone. A Wall Street Journal on the expanding role of block chain technology in banking encryption caught her eye when she heard: “Mr. Griffon will see you now.”<br/><br/>The dis-passioned look on Dale’s face froze the blood in Jessica’s veins. He wasn’t angry, but he definitely wasn’t happy either. If anything, the elder banking mogul looked surprised and disappointed. Dale cleared his throat, speaking in a tone unusually quiet and serious. “Have a seat, Jessica.”<br/><br/>“Sir, what’s this all about?” she asked, her voice concerned. Jessica was never one to be handed anything – good or bad – and sitting for some judgement was not her cup of tea. Something had gone horribly wrong, and she wanted to face the music as soon as possible. Dale slowly pulled a sheet of printed paper from a manila folder and laid it in front of the woman. The print out detailed profit and liquid asset status projections; an impossible number has been highlighted in red.<br/><br/>“Can you explain that, Jessica?” Dale asked.<br/><br/>“I --,” Jessica actually stammered. “There must be some mistake, Sir,” she implored.<br/><br/>“No, there isn’t.” Though seldom warm, Dale had never addressed Jessica in such a cold regard. “Your assets have squandered 75% of value earnings in the past three weeks. And, that’s below the market value of whatever losses your managed shares endured … which was minimal.”<br/><br/>Jessica fought back tears of immense fear and frustration. This whole experience was something out of a living nightmare, but the situation could not be escaped by waking – it was very much real.<br/><br/>Dale sighed. “Jessica. Today, as you know, I need to report to the Board of Trustees about profit projections. Anyone else would be on the street, but you’ve been exemplary until today. I’m going to diffuse the losses into various side projects overseas. Find out what happened, and<b>do not</b>let this happen again.”<br/><br/>Jessica lifted her intense eyes at the older man, who had offered her an unprecedented mercy. “I will, I promise,” she intoned. “Thank you, Sir.”<br/><div style="text-align: center"><br/>
______________________________________________________​</div><br/>Though Jessica wanted to spend the remnants of her last bonus on an outrageous bar tab, she knew that drowning in wine and liquor wouldn’t save her from her situation. It also wouldn’t help explain what happened, which interested the eager, hungry executive. In her experience, numbers and financial figures had a mind of their own, fluctuating above and below what should be expected. But, whereas the day-to-day value of such vagaries could only be guessed, the amplitude of that fluctuation could be determined to the fifth decimal place. Five hundred years of mathematics and number theory had proven beyond any doubt that what afflicted Jessica’s accounts was either a gross clerical error or the work of an individual.<br/><br/>Would someone really stoop so low as to sabotage her profits?<br/><br/>She had heard of such things before, and even worked in offices where success was acquired by any means necessary – even if that meant stabbing your “friends” in the back to step over their failed, corporate corpses in climbing the ladder to that corner office. Griffon Financial, however, wasn’t like that at all. It was one of the reasons she loved working for Dale. He was a good, kind, and decent man – Jessica was quietly fond of him as a mentor, which made that morning’s meeting all the more wounding and painful to endure.<br/><br/>Hours of intense focus dominated the businesswoman. Calls went unanswered, emails pinged every few minutes, but Jessica ignored them all. Once she set her sights on some task, Jessica Gorman displayed an unnatural focus and tenacity as her mind fought through the seeming chaos of data. That was, until she found a curious consistency. Her dark, piercing eye narrowed. The run-off tabulation ratio read near 23%, much higher than the typical 0.34%. The fifteen windows open on her monitor all revealed the same figure, some as high as 32% but none lower than 21%. The higher percentage grabbed more extraneous profit from funds whose authenticity needed verification before posting to profit. Someone had elevated that amount of money artificially rejected from her accounts and siphoning them … who knows where. That was another question.<br/><br/>Jessica’s heart beat furiously at the thought of someone intruding into her accounts – HER WORK – and marring her reputation that she’d labored ferociously to maintain. Her fist slammed on the desk, every cup filled with pens and paperclips toppling over and scattering everywhere. Jessica closed her eyes, though the fire behind those eyelids only burned brighter, like an inferno of hatred.<br/><br/>She was going to find out who the perpetrator was.<br/><br/>And when she found them … they were going to pay a<b>steep price</b>.