The summons arrived on Wednesday afternoon, exactly forty-eight hours after Victoria Croft had condescendingly ordered me to step down as CFO.

A harsh, digital chime cut through the silence of my office. An Outlook calendar notification flashed on my screen: *Emergency Board Meeting. Mandatory Atte

The silence in the boardroom was absolute, dense, and suffocating. It was the kind of silence that preceded a devastating implosion. The board members—mostly elderly men in bespoke suits who had coasted on my financial projections for the last three years—stared at Silas Thorne as if he had just mat

The boardroom evacuated with the speed of a sinking ship. The board members scrambled over each other to sign Silas's hastily drafted surrender documents, desperate to wash their hands of the radioactive fallout Julian and Victoria had created.

I didn't stay to watch the ink dry. My part in the th