Chapter 42

POV: Liam

​The rain in Connecticut was cold, needle-sharp, and relentless. It soaked through the wool of my suit, weighing me down until every movement felt like a struggle against the earth itself. But I didn't feel the chill. I didn't feel the dampness seeping into my skin. I felt the silence. The intercom at the Horizon bunker was a dead eye, a piece of useless plastic staring at me with a profound, mechanical indifference.

​Isabella was behind that steel door, and she had cut the cord. She had severed the last line of communication, leaving me standing in the mud like a stranger.

​"Mr. Sterling," Agent Vance said, stepping up beside me. He held a large, black umbrella that cast a shadow over my shoulder, a gesture of professional courtesy I found insulting. I ignored it. "The board is calling. Again. They’ve moved the session to a secure line. They want to know why you're standing on Marcus Thorne’s lawn instead of presiding over the emergency vote in Manhattan."

​"Tell them I'm conducting a field assessment," I said. My voice sounded thin, worn out by the wind.

​"They won't buy it, Liam. Miller is already pushing for a motion of 'Incapacity.' She’s telling the shareholders that you’ve lost your grip on the situation. If you don't answer that call and give them a reason to trust you, you won't have a chair to go back to. You'll be locked out before the sun goes down."

​I looked at the bunker. The concrete was stained dark by the rain, looking more like a tomb than a laboratory. I could almost feel her in there—the sharp, cold brilliance of her mind working through variables I couldn't even see. She thought I was the enemy. She thought my abstention was a choice of the company over her. Or worse, she thought I was just a middleman, a manager sent to collect a wandering piece of tech.

​I turned and walked back to the car, my shoes sinking into the soft earth. "Fine. Put them through."

​The interior of the sedan was silent, the roar of the rain muffled by the thick, reinforced glass. It was a vacuum of leather and polished wood. The screen on the dashboard flickered to life, the Sterling Tech logo fading into the faces of six men and women. The Board of Directors. They didn't look like colleagues. They looked like a jury.

​"Liam," Miller began, her voice brittle and lacking its usual polish. She was sitting in the high-backed chair at the end of the boardroom table—my chair. "We are in a closed-door session. We need to address the 'conflict of interest' that has paralyzed your leadership over the last four hours. The stock is hemorrhaging, and you’re standing in a field."

​"There is no paralysis," I said, staring into the camera lens. "I am managing the recovery of a proprietary asset. The situation requires a delicate touch, not a blunt instrument."

​"Is she a wife or an asset, Liam?" a board member from the back asked, his voice echoing in the sterile room. "Because if she’s a wife, you shouldn't be involved in the legal seizure. It’s a breach of ethics. If she’s an asset, you shouldn't be protecting her from the DOJ. You’ve abstained twice when we needed a decisive vote. You’ve blocked the board’s access to the Medusa core. You are effectively acting as her shield while she tries to bankrupt this firm."

​"I am protecting the long-term valuation of this company," I countered, my hand tightening on the armrest. "A forced, violent seizure of Isabella Vane will trigger an international regulatory nightmare. The press is already calling it human rights overreach. If we don't handle this with surgical precision, the Vane inheritance will be tied up in litigation for a decade. Is that what you want? A frozen asset?"

​"We don't have a decade," Miller snapped. "We have a shareholder meeting in four days. And right now, the news is reporting that our CEO is being 'blocked' by his own wife at a rival fund’s bunker. It looks like a circus, Liam. It looks like you’ve lost control of your house and your company simultaneously."

​I watched the data ticker at the bottom of the screen. Sterling Tech stock was down another four percent since I’d left the city. The numbers were red, bleeding across the monitor.

​"I have the situation under control," I said, though the words tasted like ash.

​"Do you?" Miller held up a tablet, showing a document with a federal seal. "Because we just received a notice from the SEC. Someone—presumably Isabella—has filed an anonymous whistleblower report alleging that Sterling Tech failed to disclose 'synthetic biological liabilities' during our last three quarterly filings. They’re citing the Sterling Trust as the primary financier of the Medusa project."

​My heart skipped a beat, a cold shock radiating through my chest. The Sterling Trust. That was my father’s private vault, the legacy fund that was supposed to be untouchable. I hadn't looked at those records in years; I’d trusted the executors to handle the transition.

​"That’s an internal matter," I said, my voice tightening. "The Trust is a separate entity."

​"It’s a criminal matter," Miller corrected, her eyes fixed on mine with a terrifying lack of sympathy. "And because you are the sole beneficiary of that trust, Liam, you are now officially a subject of the investigation. The SEC is questioning whether you used the merger to cover up the Trust’s illegal experimentation. We cannot have a CEO who is under federal scrutiny for the very technology he’s trying to 'recover.' It’s a conflict we can't survive."

​"What are you saying?"

​"I'm saying the board has reached a consensus," Miller said. She looked at the other members, and for the first time, I saw the total lack of dissent. No one would meet my eye. "A motion has been filed to limit your executive authority. Effective immediately, your power to negotiate with Isabella Vane or Marcus Thorne is revoked. You are to return to New York. The 'recovery' is now in the hands of the board’s legal council and the federal task force."

​"You can't do that," I said, the panic finally breaking through the ice. "I am the Chairman."

​"We just did," Miller replied, her voice dropping to a final, cold register. "And Liam? If you try to bypass the gate again, or if you contact her outside of a recorded channel, we’ll move from 'limitation' to 'removal.' Don't make this harder than it has to be."

​The screen went black.

​I sat in the dark car, the silence of the rain returning with a vengeance. My authority was a ghost, a title without a sword. My father’s secrets were bleeding into the light, and I was the one who was going to burn for them. And Isabella—Isabella was in that bunker, pulling the threads of a tapestry I hadn't even known was being woven.

​My phone buzzed in my lap. A message from an unknown, encrypted number.

​The CFO just signed the proxy for your removal. He was the last holdout. You’re alone, Liam. Act accordingly.

​I looked at the bunker one last time through the blurred glass. I wasn't the CEO anymore. I wasn't the husband. I was just a man in a wet suit with a dying empire and a wife who wouldn't even speak his name. I signaled the driver to move. There was nothing left to do but watch the fall.