Golden Cage Mommy Mutiny (Elyse) novel Chapter 6

The main conference room was packed, a wall of black.

Elyse and Nancy led a group of twenty–plus working moms, all in matching black outfits, sitting in the front row. Everyone else sat farther back, whispering, watching, treating it like entertainment.

Elyse was still giving her “black squad” a final pep talk. “Remember, the second Layla walks in, no one

speaks. We just stare.”

“Let her talk first. If she doesn’t agree to every demand, we walk out together and go straight to the media.”

“Today it’s either we go down, or she does.”

Nancy nodded hard. “Yes. Let her learn we’re not easy targets!”

Time ticked by.

8:59 a.m. Almost every phone in the room buzzed at once.

A new email arrived. Elyse clicked it with an annoyed tap, assuming it was another soothing corporate

notice.

Then she read the first line. All the color drained out of her face.

The body of the email contained a joint complaint, dozens of pages long, bearing the formal letterhead and

seal of a law firm.

The list of defendants took up an entire page.

The first name was Elyse Austin. Then Nancy Cain. Then every employee who’d posted defamatory

comments under anonymous accounts.

At the end: a thick stack of evidence including screenshots of every anonymous comment, each paired with

an IP address and a real employee name and staff ID.

The entire conference room fell into dead silence. The black–clad moms froze in their seats as if collectively

paralyzed.

Their expressions shifted, one after another: resolve to shock, shock to confusion, confusion to pure

Five hundred thousand. For any one of them, it was enough to crush a family.

fear.

“No… this can’t be real…” A young mom whispered it, then started crying on the spot. “I just… I just followed

Chapter 6

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“I only said the food was bad,” another woman sobbed. “That’s all I said…”

Nancy looked ashen. She’d been careful, only using an alternative account to anonymously like posts, occasionally echoing “Capitalists are all the same.” How had she been dragged into it?

Elyse, after the first stunned second, snapped straight into rage. She shot to her feet and pointed toward the door, shrieking. “Layla West! You psycho! You vile bitch! You’re really suing us? How dare you!”

Nine a.m. sharp. I pushed open the conference room doors and walked in.

“Looks like everyone got the email,” I said. My voice cut through the silence like a blade.

“So.” I glanced across the room. “Does anyone here have questions about the authenticity of the complaint?”

Nobody spoke, except Elyse, who stared at me, eyes bloodshot. “Layla West, who the hell do you think you are?” Her voice was raw with fury. “On what grounds? We only expressed our opinions. That’s free speech!”

“Yeah, free speech!” Several people behind her seemed to find their backbone and echoed along. “This is retaliation! This is abuse of corporate power!”