Chapter 1 - THE TOAST OF THE DAMNEDThe amber whiskey swirled in Julian’s crystal glass under the gleaming brass chandelier of my former office.
From my high-security observation room across the city, I watched my eldest son raise his glass to the empty boardroom. Celia and Marcus stood flanking him, their laughter echoing through the hidden audio feeds I had routed directly into my secure tablet.
"To freedom," Julian repeated, grinning from ear to ear. "And to the old woman finally getting out of our way."
Marcus chuckled, tossing a set of diamond-encrusted car keys onto the mahogany desk. "Can you believe how easy it was? The doctors didn't even question the heart failure report. We're sitting on four billion dollars, and not a single auditor asked a single question."
"Because they're idiots," Celia chimed in, walking over to my custom leather chair and sitting down as if she had owned it for a decade. "Now, let's talk about liquidating the European logistics sector. I want those ports sold off by Friday to fund my foundation."
I sat quietly in the dark room, my fingers resting lightly on the edge of the console.
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They thought they had won. They thought they had successfully poisoned my medicine, cut my brake lines, and buried an empty box under white roses just to inherit an empire they never built.
They forgot one fundamental rule of business: Never declare victory before the ink is dry on the indictment.
