The heavy mahogany doors of The Gilded Vulture trembled under the weight of the silence that followed. Dominic’s knuckles turned white where his hands still gripped the empty wheelchair handles. His breath hitched in his throat, trapped behind a wall of sheer disbelief. The man he had spent the last five years wheeling around like a broken doll—the frail, paralyzed uncle he had quietly poisoned with micro-doses of digitalis every Tuesday night—was standing. Not just standing, but towering.

The walnut-paneled boardroom on the fiftieth floor of Moretti Global Logistics was dead silent. Twelve men and women—the remaining regional directors, senior partners, and shadow stakeholders of the syndicate—sat around the massive glass table, their faces pale and tense.

The double doors swung open with a slow, deliberate creak.

Rocco Moretti walked in first, standing tall, his posture unyielding and absolute. But it was the woman walking beside him that made every person in the room freeze. Maeve Moretti—wearing an immaculate charcoal suit, her expression carved from ice—took the head of the table.

Arthur Vance, the oldest and most ruthless regional director, sneered, leaning back in his leather chair. "What is the meaning of this? Where is Dominic? We don't take orders from strangers, Rocco, and certainly not from some nobody you dragged off the street."

Rocco didn't say a word. He simply pulled out his chair and stood behind it, letting Maeve take the central seat.

Maeve opened a sleek tablet computer. A holographic projection flickered to life above the center of the table, displaying a complex, interconnected web of offshore accounts, blackmail files, and internal betrayal logs.

"Arthur Vance," Maeve said, her voice cutting through the heavy air like a razor blade. "Director of European operations. For the past four years, you’ve been funneling forty percent of our shipping revenues into private accounts in Zurich, while secretly selling our port schedules to our biggest rival in Marseille."

Arthur’s face drained of color. He slammed his hands onto the table and stood up. "That's a lie! You have no proof—"

Maeve tapped her screen once. A high-definition video feed began playing on the wall monitor, showing Arthur shaking hands with a rival syndicate boss in a private French villa, signing documents that explicitly breached Moretti protocols.

"The proof is already in the hands of Interpol," Maeve said calmly, not even blinking as Arthur stared at her in sheer terror. "Federal agents are currently freezing your Swiss accounts as we speak. You have two choices, Arthur: you can walk out those doors right now and spend the rest of your life running from both the law and us, or you can sign your resignation papers and hand over your shares for one dollar."

Arthur trembled, looking around the room for support. Every single director was staring straight down at the table, terrified to make eye contact. The message was unmistakable: the old regime was dead, and the new queen had already won the war before it even started.

With shaking hands, Arthur grabbed a pen, scribbled his signature across the resignation document, and bolted from the room without looking back.

Maeve looked around the remaining eleven directors, her eyes cold, sharp, and magnetic.