The heavy silence of the conference room was a stark contrast to the storm that had just passed. The echo of angry voices still lingered in the air, but now it was just Cedric and me, two men trapped in the aftermath of a corporate firing squad. I felt a strange sense of relief, a brief moment of calm before the next wave of chaos. My mind, still reeling from the events, tried to process everything that had just been said and done.I spent a moment gathering my thoughts, taking a deep breath to steady myself, before finally getting up. I had to get back to my office, to the work that was now a ticking clock, a deadline hanging over my head. But as I reached for the door, Cedric’s voice, a low and even tone, stopped me dead in my tracks.“Ed, you know those people want you gone, right?”Of course I knew. It was a fact that had been drilled into me since the first day my father introduced me as his heir. The board saw me as an imposter, a placeholder for the "true" heir, James. I turned

​The engine roared to life, a low, angry growl that mirrored the fury coursing through my veins. The slam of the car door was a final, definitive period on the hellish chapter I had just lived. I sped out of the driveway, the sprawling family mansion shrinking in my rearview mirror until it was just a faint, cold light in the distance. I drove with no destination, just the need to feel the wind against my face and the road beneath my wheels, a desperate attempt to outrun the pain that had been inflicted upon me.​Flashbacks of the scene at the dinner table assaulted me. The words, my father's punch, the taste of blood in my mouth—each memory was a fresh stab of pain. I drove for thirty minutes, the city lights blurring into a meaningless streak of color. The anger was a fiery, consuming thing, but beneath it was a deep, hollow ache of betrayal. After a while, the adrenaline began to wane, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion. I needed to crash, to find a place where I could process the