The private jet sliced through darkness at forty thousand feet, carrying Derick toward a confrontation that would define everything his parents had died for.He sat on the leather seat, studying the faces staring back at him from the folders spread across the cabin's table. Alexander Rostov's cold eyes. Sebastian Dubois's aristocratic sneer. Mei Chen's calculating expression.Three heirs. Three empires.Lily sat across from him, her laptop glowing with briefing documents she'd been updating throughout the flight. She looked up, caught him staring at Mei Chen's photograph, and cleared her throat."The Foundation Summit will run for three days," she said."Day one is social events and networking, which is basically warfare disguised as cocktail parties. Day two covers business sessions where each heir must prove their financial strength and strategic vision. Day three is The Trial."Derick looked up. "The Trial?""A formal challenge where heirs must defend their claim to Foundation leade

The Foundation's grand hall felt like a colosseum.Hundreds of members filled seats arranged in rising tiers, creating an amphitheater effect that made the four podiums at the center look like sacrificial altars. Every face in the audience belonged to someone who controlled billions, who shaped markets, who could end careers with a single phone call. They'd gathered to judge whether the heirs before them were worthy of leading The Foundation into its next generation.Derick stood at his assigned podium, feeling the weight of centuries pressing down on him. To his left, Alexander Rostov exuded confidence that came from never having been denied anything. To his right, Sebastian Dubois looked bored in that aristocratic way that suggested he'd already won and was simply waiting for everyone else to acknowledge it. And at the far end, Mei Chen stood with mechanical stillness, her expression revealing nothing while her mind probably calculated probability matrices for every possible outcome

"Your parents excelled at it," Valentina said, her voice carrying genuine admiration. "Your mother especially. She had this way of turning their traps back on them, of revealing that the supposedly perfect answers the other heirs proposed came from privilege and lack of real-world experience."The dinner continued for another two hours, strategy mixing with stories about Derick's parents that he'd never heard before. By the time he returned to his hotel, he felt simultaneously more prepared and more aware of how high the stakes truly were.Then his phone rang with a crisis that pulled him back into wars he thought had been won.Charlotte's voice carried panic that made Derick's exhaustion vanish instantly."I hate to bother you during the Summit," she began, already apologizing before explaining the problem, "but something's happening and I don't know how to stop it.""What happened?" Derick asked, his strategic mind immediately focusing despite the late hour and accumulated fatigue.

The grand hall underwent a complete transformation overnight, shifting from a standard conference space into an environment that looks like a courtroom. Hundreds of Foundation members sat in those rows like a massive jury. At the very center of the chamber, four elaborate chairs stood in a row. Five of the most senior Foundation members sat on a dais that was elevated above the rest of the room. Their collective age exceeded four centuries, and their accumulated power was enough to shift the direction of entire nations through nothing more than whispered suggestions. These individuals were the true patriarchs and matriarchs of the order. They had witnessed the evolution of the Foundation through global wars, political revolutions, and technological shifts that would have appeared as pure magic to the previous generation. Derick took his seat alongside Alexander, Sebastian, and Mei Chen. He could feel the weight of every single stare in the room pressing down on him like a physical

The room went absolutely silent, disturbed by implications that suggested entire populations could be sacrificed on the altar of calculated benefit.Even Alexander looked unsettled, recognizing that Mei Chen had crossed lines he wouldn't have considered approachable.Then it was Derick's turn.He approached the center feeling every eye in the chamber evaluating whether the American upstart could possibly match what had just been presented. Three heirs had demonstrated power unconstrained by mercy, tradition valued above progress, and cold calculation that treated humans as data points in larger equations.What could he possibly offer that would surpass those demonstrations?The Chief Elder presented the same first challenge. "A business partner betrays you and steals one hundred million dollars. You have proof. But exposing him publicly destabilizes markets and hurts innocent investors. What do you do?"Derick's answer came from years of building power while maintaining principles his