Blake Morrison stood in the executive conference room at Morrison Tech headquarters, where the long glass table reflected the cold glow from three wall-mounted monitors that displayed Adam Industries' stock price in relentless red numbers. The share price had fallen to $8.23, and he studied the downward curve that had erased more than eighty percent of the company's value in just two months, because that collapse represented exactly the opening he had waited for his entire career.He turned to the board members and financial advisors seated around the table, men and women who had grown accustomed to his calm certainty in moments like this. "Gentlemen and ladies, we are looking at a rare chance to acquire a company with strong underlying value at a fraction of what it should be worth, because Adam Industries still holds valuable patents, prime real estate, and long-term contracts that remain solid even after the leadership failures."His CFO, David Patterson, advanced the slide on the

Blake Morrison's hands refused to stay still. He had been staring at the photographs of Julian and James Blackwood for more than twenty minutes now, and the similarity between them kept sinking deeper into his mind with every passing second.He had threatened the heir to a forty-seven-billion-dollar empire, and he had done it without realizing who he was actually dealing with. He had blackmailed Eleanor by using compromising photographs, and he had forced her into an impossible position where she had to choose between public shame and betraying Julian in front of the world. He had shoved Julian in that crowded diner, mocked him while cameras rolled, and then posted about the whole humiliating encounter online so more people could see it and laugh.All the while, he had tried to position himself to profit from the Adam family's collapse, convinced that Julian was the one engineering that destruction from the shadows. The irony burned now because Blake understood too late that he had be

Eleanor sat alone in the modest hotel suite that the Blackwood Consortium covered under her protection agreement, and she kept her eyes fixed on the plain package one of Ethan's security team had delivered an hour earlier because the weight of not knowing what waited inside had kept her frozen in place.The label carried only her name in careful, elegant handwriting with no return address anywhere, and although she had felt the fear building since the moment the package arrived, the morning light now pouring through the curtains gave her just enough resolve to pick up the small knife from the fruit basket and slice through the tape.When she lifted the lid, two things lay inside waiting for her.The first was a thick manila folder, the sturdy kind used for serious legal files, and Eleanor drew it out with hands that already trembled before she even opened the cover.Pages of documents filled the folder, financial statements, printed emails, notarized signatures, precise dates arranged

Theodore Marshall stood on the sidewalk outside the Blackwood Consortium headquarters and looked up at the tower with his mouth slightly open because he had driven past this building dozens of times over the years yet had never stepped inside until today.Fifty-three floors of steel and glass climbed straight into the sky and the top ten floors belonged entirely to the executive offices of Blackwood Consortium so the structure itself carried a value greater than most companies he had managed throughout his career.Somewhere inside that tower the mysterious owner of Geneva Holdings waited for him and that owner now controlled fifty-one percent of Adam Industries.Theodore straightened his tie and picked up his briefcase which held the audit reports along with the strategic proposals then he walked through the revolving doors into a lobby that felt pulled from the pages of an architecture magazine because the marble floors gleamed under soaring ceiling

Blake Morrison sat alone in the apartment he had somehow held onto despite the federal asset freezes that had taken everything else, and he stared at the laptop screen where yet another business article detailed Julian Blackwood's upcoming press conference.Eight days remained. In eight days Julian would step forward and lay it all bare—his true identity, the careful unraveling of the Adams, the quiet acquisition of Adam Industries, and Blake's own failed attempt to seize control that had ended in complete humiliation.Blake's hands trembled slightly as he scrolled through the latest coverage, because his reputation now lay in ruins. Morrison Tech had stripped him of every title and responsibility, while federal prosecutors continued building securities fraud cases that carried the real possibility of fifteen years behind bars.All of it traced back to the single, fatal mistake of crossing Julian Blackwood without ever grasping who he truly was.He switched to his phone and opened the