Chapter 1 Black Girl Gets...The CEO
The Making of V
She hated her name.
Evangeline Monroe. Four syllables of syrup and silk, flowing off the tongue like something sacred—like prayer, like legacy, like a lullaby whispered over a crib carved from mahogany and privilege. A name made for lace christening gowns and monogrammed diaper bags, for ballet recitals and birthday parties thrown on yachts.
Too elegant.
Too ethereal.
Too goddamn hopeful to belong to a girl like her.
Because when Evangeline came into the world, there were no lullabies. No mother. No tearful joy. Just a nurse with a strained smile and a clipboard, the shrill hum of overhead fluorescent lights, and the faint, vanishing trace of cheap floral perfume left behind by the woman who birthed her and disappeared before her first cry even landed.
No note. No name whispered with love. No touch.
Just absence.
“Evangeline Monroe” was never a name meant to be lived in. It was a placeholder—a dream someone else had no intention of raising.
She preferred V.
Just one letter. Stark. Sharp. Complete.
Not short for anything. Not cute. Not tender.
It was a boundary drawn in bone. A blade disguised as a name.
And unlike “Evangeline,” V wasn’t something you gave to a child and hoped she’d grow into it.
V was something you earned. Something you survived to become.
And she had survived.
Black. Fat. Female.
There was no trifecta more triggering to the world’s delicate sensibilities. She was too much for classrooms. Too loud for friendships. Too visible in spaces that wanted her erased. They called her names. Laughed behind their hands. Shifted their gaze.
But they never looked her in the eye long enough to understand that the girl they tried to smother was watching.
Memorizing every slight.
Cataloging every injustice.
Plotting a future so airtight it would suffocate the doubt out of every room she entered.
She didn’t fight for belonging.
She built her own empire of logic and code, bricks made from footnotes and fury.
While other kids scribbled hearts and practiced signatures, she was calculating compound interest in the margins of her homework.
Her obsession with numbers didn’t come from ambition.
It came from necessity.
Because numbers didn’t lie.
They didn’t blink.
They didn’t look at her like she was a mistake.
Numbers respected precision.
And V was precision.
By twenty-nine, she had turned herself into something unbreakable.
A bachelor’s in Accounting.
A master’s in Taxation.
A doctorate in Fiscal Policy.
CPA. EA. LLM.
Each degree, each title, each designation was a blade she forged with sleepless nights and fury, honing herself into a woman made entirely of edge.
She didn’t display them. She didn’t need to.
She wore them.
And then came Harmoniq.
The interviews were insulting in that polished, professional way that makes you want to scream in lowercase. They didn’t care about her credentials. They cared about her fit.
Could she “manage pressure without becoming defensive”?
Did she have the “emotional intelligence” to navigate their team of fragile egos and bloated mediocrity?
She kept her face neutral. Her voice even.
But inside, she was cataloging again. Calculating.
Scanning the room like a sniper in stilettos.
They offered her the job three weeks later. The salary was anemic.
She laughed. Out loud.
Then accepted.
Because while they were still trying to size her up, she’d already mapped every weakness in their organization.
She saw what they didn’t: a hollow advisory wing—pretty on paper, rotten underneath.
A crumbling structure held together by jargon and white male confidence.
She didn’t come to fix it.
She came to replace it.
And she did.
In four years, she did more than resurrect that department.
She turned it into a machine. A monster.
Implemented systems so streamlined that entire workflows vanished overnight.
Found tax strategies buried so deep the IRS forgot to close the loopholes.
Designed solutions that made CFOs weep with gratitude—and envy.
Clients didn’t just love her.
They feared her.
And rightly so.
She built a fortress out of compliance and cunning.
Crafted savings plans that danced along razor-thin lines of legality.
Her strategies were art—dense, dangerous, elegant.
A symphony of numbers arranged to do exactly what she intended:
Make her clients filthy rich and untouchable.
But inside the firm?
She was a rumor. A whisper.
A name that made people glance over their shoulders but never invite her into the room.
She didn’t schmooze.
Didn’t linger by the coffee station.
Didn’t pretend to like karaoke.
She was the shadow that made sure the money stayed clean.
And she was fine with that.
Mostly.
Until Vanguard.
Their biggest client. A multinational behemoth mid-merger, hemorrhaging money and grasping for salvation.
The tax situation was a disaster—half digital, half analog, all chaos.
V didn’t flinch.
She rolled up her sleeves, sharpened her claws, and sank into the numbers like they owed her something.
Three weeks. No sleep. All fury.
She tore through their filings, carved a path through conflicting regulations, found breathing room where there was none.
She built a plan so airtight, so serpentine, so goddamn brilliant it didn’t just save Vanguard $2.2 million over three years—it redefined what was possible under the tax code.
And on the night before the big meeting, she stayed late.
Not from desperation.
But because, for once, she wanted her work to be undeniable.
Jeff was with her.
Her assistant. Fresh-faced and fallen from grace.
Trying to earn back a sliver of his own worth.
He’d come to Harmoniq full of stories about his future.
But the firm had no use for soft ambition in khakis.
And Jeff—privileged, panicked, perfectly white—had found himself in orbit around the only person who actually got shit done.
He used to try too hard.
Now he just tried.
And she respected that.
Together, they fine-tuned every detail.
The slides weren’t just clean—they glowed.
The math sang.
The risk analysis read like a prophecy.
When she finally left the building at 11:03 p.m., the air outside was thick with Florida heat and the promise of triumph.
She didn’t smile.
She didn’t allow herself that.
Not yet.
The next morning, at precisely 10:07 a.m., her phone buzzed.
LinkedIn.
She opened the app, not expecting much—maybe a spam message from a recruiter who hadn’t read her résumé, or a connection request from someone she hadn’t seen since grad school.
What she saw instead was a photo.
Bill Harlan.
Grinning like a man who’d just split the atom.
White and wearing one of his too-expensive, too-tight suits.
Leaning casually against the wall of Harmoniq’s executive lounge, with a mug she knew he only carried when cameras were near.
His caption dripped smugness:
“Just delivered a multi-year tax restructuring strategy to one of our legacy clients.
Proud to lead a team that continues to push boundaries and deliver innovative results.
#CorporateExcellence #Leadership #StrategyUnleashed”
There it was.
The entire plan—her plan—boiled down to a bullet-point brag and a hashtag.
A screenshot of her deck.
Her numbers.
Her language.
Not a single mention of her name.
Her hands didn’t shake.
Her jaw didn’t clench.
Her expression didn’t shift.
But inside?
Something ancient cracked.
There’s a silence Black women know.
A silence that’s not empty, but full—pressurized.
It lives in the space between being robbed and being expected to smile through it.
The silence between the slap and the apology that never comes.
The kind that precedes storms. That births them.
She stood there, still as glass, as the theft rippled through her like static.
And when she moved—slowly, deliberately—it was only to close her office door.
Not because she was wounded.
Because something inside her was waking up.
Something sharp.
Something radiant.
Something with teeth.
Not vengeance.
Not yet.
But purpose.
And it was no longer interested in being quiet.