Johnny didn’t move.He simply stood there beneath her, Emily Blake perched above him, her heel still hovering where his obedience was supposed to be.He looked at her the way one looks at a stranger wearing a familiar face—detached, dissecting, unreadable.As if his eyes were stripping her down past the makeup, past the posture, past the performance… and finding nothing worth respecting.Her legs—crossed, elevated, pointed at his face—became the trigger.The past slammed into him like a wave he’d thought couldn’t reach him anymore.Internship days.Her voice. Her heels. Her cruelty.He remembered everything.He remembered how she entered the company after him — clueless, unskilled, lazy — and within three weeks was somehow supervising him. Not because of effort. Not because of talent. Because the higher-ups liked how she looked in a pencil skirt.He remembered doing her tasks every night.He remembered her forwarding her entire workload to him with a casual, “Babe, be a dear and fini

“You will destroy me?”Darius King threw his head back and laughed—loud, sharp, theatrical. “You hear that?” he said to no one in particular, spreading his arms. “Did everyone hear that?”“He is going to destroy me?” he said, spreading his arms as if presenting a comedian to the room. The laughter didn’t stay with him. It spread.A ripple first—confused chuckles from people who didn’t know why they were laughing but understood they were supposed to. Then louder. Freer. Someone near the printers snorted. Another person actually clapped once before catching themselves.Phones came out. Subtle at first. Then less subtle.Johnny stood where he was.Still. Straight. Hands at his sides.A statue dropped into the middle of a circus.“You’ll pay.” Johnny said again It didn’t sound dramatic. It didn’t rise. It didn’t shake.That was why the nearest people leaned in without realizing it.Darius blinked once. “I’m sorry?”Johnny continued, voice level. “You’ll eat your words. You’ll beg. And

Darius King doesn’t fall so much as he gives up. His knees buckle, not from impact, but from realization. From the sudden understanding that whatever protected him for years—status, fear, rooms that closed when he entered—has stopped working. He sinks down, palms bracing against the carpet, shoulders caving inward. The suit that once made him look untouchable now hangs wrong on his body, wrinkled where it shouldn’t be, pulled tight across a back that no longer knows how to stand straight. “I’m still the head here!” he snapped, voice louder than he felt. His hands trembled as they hovered uselessly. “You don’t—You can’t—know what you’re doing!Everything stopped. The air itself seemed to stiffen. Johnny’s fist hovered mid-motion, Darius’ body rigid, the room suspended in disbelief. Armed men appeared, their boots heavy on the floor, guns trained. Every heartbeat was audible, every breath a thunderclap. Johnny’s eyes scanned the barrels aimed at him. Each one a promise of instant

The executive floor of SilverCrest Holdings now had a particular kind of quiet—manufactured, expensive, hostile. The carpet swallowed footsteps. The glass walls reflected power back at itself. Even raised voices sounded moderated by money.And the guns never moved.They stayed trained on Johnny’s chest, his head, his spine—three different men, three different angles. Professional. Careful. Not shaking. The kind of stillness that told everyone in the room these weren’t bluffing security contractors. These were people who had done this before.Johnny stood in the center of it all.Hands relaxed at his sides. Posture straight. Face calm.The room had formed a wide circle around him without anyone consciously deciding to step back. Executives. Assistants. Sector heads. A few interns frozen near the walls, unsure whether to look or pretend they weren’t witnessing something that could end careers—or lives.Darren Cross stood near the center of the floor, jacket perfectly cut, cuffs immac