Elena's travel schedule intensified. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, every week a new city, new meetings, new contracts to pursue. Lawrence found himself managing Owen and Claire almost entirely alone while running LanceCorp and dealing with the ongoing aftermath of Hale's attacks.Claire's behavioral problems started three weeks after the Japanese contract. Tantrums at school, aggressive incidents with other children, defiance toward teachers. Lawrence got the first call during a board meeting. The second call came during negotiations with German suppliers. The third forced him to leave a critical strategy session with Lord Blackwell.Dr. Hart didn't mince words when Lawrence mentioned it during their next session."Claire is reacting to Elena's absence. Owen is old enough to intellectualize it somewhat, but Claire is three. She just knows her mother disappeared.""Elena didn't disappear. She's building her company.""From Claire's perspective, those are the same thing." Hart leaned forw

The monitor cast a cool blue light across the desk. Lawrence opened a blank document. He listed every project Rousseau Energy was running across the globe.Nordic wind farms. Mediterranean solar storage. The North American grid expansion.Each project cost tens of millions. Each project took time, effort, and endless travel.Next to each item, he wrote down Victor Hale’s counter-moves.In Sweden, Hale’s firm had offered impossibly low rates to take their local partners. In Italy, Hale had bought out key suppliers weeks before contracts were signed. In New York, Hale’s legal team filed constant administrative delays.It looked like aggressive competition. But looking at it now, Lawrence saw the simple truth underneath.Hale was not trying to win these markets. He was trying to keep Lawrence and Elena busy. Every hour Lawrence spent fixing an Italian supply line was an hour away from his family. Every flight Elena took to New York weakened their control over the main company headquarter

The morning air was crisp and chilly as sunlight washed across the glass tower of Rousseau Energy. On the thirty-sixth floor, the marble hallways were quiet, save for the hum of the central heating and the distant sound of city traffic far below. Lawrence stood in the doorway of his office, holding a fresh mug of black coffee. His eyes were fixed on the far end of the hallway, near the glass elevator doors. Beside him, standing just inside the doorway out of sight from the main corridor, Marcus Webb checked his smartwatch. "She’s in the building," Marcus whispered softly. "Swiped her keycard at the lobby turnstile two minutes ago. She bought an artisanal hazelnut latte from the ground-floor cafe—Elena’s favorite." Lawrence’s jaw tightened, but his face remained completely calm. "She’s keeping up the routine. She wants everything to feel completely normal." <

Arthur Miller, his heavy face flushed dark red with anger, stood in the center of the doorway. Behind him, four senior board members crowded into the room, their eyes wide with panic. In the shadows of the corridor, Sarah Vance leaned against the wall, her hands folded neatly over her designer handbag, watching the collapse of Lawrence and Elena Rousseau with a cold, satisfied smirk. "I’m waiting for an answer, Lawrence!" Miller bellowed, slamming a thick stack of emergency legal documents onto the glass table. "The stock is down fifty-five percent! Wall Street is eating us alive! The television cameras are lined up outside our lobby right now showing our share price falling into the gutter! Sign the emergency proxy papers and step down!" On the wall-mounted monitors, the financial news networks were broadcasting in full panic mode. A red banner flashed across the bottom of the screen: ROUSSEAU ENERGY IN FREEFALL &

The twin engines of the Gulfstream G650 aircraft roared at maximum thrust as the jet sliced through the pitch-black night sky five thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean.Inside the luxury cabin, there was no relaxation. The atmosphere felt like a military command center on the brink of war.Digital maps flashed across three wide screens mounted on the mahogany walls. Red lines tracked their flight path directly toward Frankfurt, Germany. A bold digital clock in the corner showed the local German time: 10:30 PM.They had exactly ninety minutes before midnight. Ninety minutes before Apex’s physical sabotage team uploaded the Option Omega virus into the Frankfurt Primary Grid Control Center and plunged central Europe into total darkness.Lawrence Rousseau sat at the central conference table, his suit jacket off, his white shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His laptop was connected directly to the jet’s satellite uplink. His fingers flew across the keyboard at blistering speed, analyz