CHAPTER 3 — BOARDROOM BLACKOUT
At 8:00 a.m., the Whitmore Global headquarters in downtown Los Angeles was already burning in silence.
No fire.
No smoke.
Just phones lighting up like detonations in expensive suits.
The boardroom was full.
Executives sat frozen, coffee untouched, laptops open but ignored.
The image was still on screen.
Vanessa. Ethan. The hotel room.
The caption underneath it burned worse than the scandal itself.
“Congratulations to them both.”
No one spoke for a full twenty seconds.
Then one investor leaned back slowly.
“This is either a breach of trust…”
A pause.
“…or a resignation notice we didn’t vote on yet.”
Ethan wasn’t there yet.
But his absence was louder than any defense he could have given.
Across the table, a legal advisor finally whispered:
“If the spouse controls holding shares…”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t need to.
Everyone already understood.
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The empire wasn’t being attacked.
It was being reclaimed.
