Infinite Cashback System: Every Loss Makes Me Richer

Fired by the Board

The boardroom on the fortieth floor had always smelled like money ... leather, polished wood, the faint bitterness of overpriced coffee nobody actually drank. Today it smelled like fear.

Ethan sat near the end of the mahogany table, hands folded, saying nothing. He didn't need to. The folder in front of each board member did the talking for him.

Raymond Holt stood at the head of the table, jacket wrinkled, tie loosened like a man who'd been fighting it all morning. His voice, once smooth enough to charm a room into submission, now cracked at the edges.

"This is a coordinated attack," Raymond said, jabbing a finger at the folder in front of him. "Fabricated documents. I built this company from nothing, and now I'm supposed to believe some ... some disgraced accountant forged evidence to..."

"The wire transfers aren't forged, Raymond." That was Diane Osei, head of the audit committee, not looking up from the pages in her hands. Her voice was flat. Final. "They're timestamped. They match the offshore accounts under your name. Three of them."

"Those accounts were opened years before I..."

"Six months ago." Diane finally looked at him. "The last deposit was six months ago."

Silence settled over the room like snowfall ... quiet, cold, burying him an inch at a time.

Ethan watched it happen the way he watched everything: carefully, without expression, cataloguing every flicker of doubt crossing the board members' faces. He hadn't said a word since the meeting started. He didn't need to. Two years of patient work ... shell companies, forensic accountants he'd hired anonymously, a paper trail Raymond himself had been too arrogant to cover properly ... had already said everything for him.

Raymond's eyes found him across the table.

"You did this."

"I provided documentation," Ethan said quietly. "The company did the rest."

"You son of a..."

"Raymond." The chairman's voice cut through, weary and sharp. Marcus Webb had chaired this board for eleven years, and Ethan had learned enough about him to know exactly what came next. Self-preservation dressed up as principle. "We need to vote."

Raymond's head snapped toward him.

"Marcus. We've known each other for fifteen years..."

"And in fifteen years I've never seen anything like this." Marcus didn't blink. "The SEC inquiry alone could sink this company. If the board doesn't act, all of us go down with you."

That was the moment Ethan saw it ... the exact second Raymond understood he'd already lost.

Not when the folders opened.

Not when Diane read the numbers aloud.

Now.

When the man who'd shared golf games and dinner tables with him for over a decade wouldn't even use his first name with warmth anymore.

"All those in favor," Marcus said, "of stripping Raymond Holt of his remaining executive authority, effective immediately, pending full termination proceedings ... say aye."

The ayes came fast. Too fast. Not one hesitation among twelve board members who, an hour ago, had called this man their friend.

Raymond's hands curled into fists on the table.

"Cowards," he breathed. "All of you. The second it gets difficult, you..."

"The vote is unanimous," Marcus said, already reaching for the next item on his agenda, as if Raymond were nothing more than a line to be crossed off a list.

Ethan almost felt something close to pity.

Almost.

Then Raymond's chair scraped back, violent and sudden, and the room's temperature dropped another ten degrees.

"You think this is over?" Raymond's voice had lost its polish entirely now, raw and shaking. "You think you ruined me?" His gaze locked onto Ethan, and something in it had shifted ... past anger, past desperation, into something closer to panic. "You have no idea what you've done. No idea what's coming for..."

His hand closed around the letter opener sitting beside the water pitcher.

Ethan saw it a half-second before anyone else ... the flex of Raymond's knuckles, the sudden shift of his weight onto the balls of his feet. Board members were still frozen in their chairs, mouths half-open, minds too slow to process what their eyes were telling them.

Raymond lunged across the table.

A woman screamed.

Chairs toppled.

The letter opener caught the overhead light in a thin silver flash as it arced toward Ethan's chest.

It never landed.

Jax moved like he'd been standing there the entire time waiting for exactly this ... no wasted motion, no hesitation, no sound beyond the soft scuff of his shoe pivoting on marble. His hand closed around Raymond's wrist mid-swing, twisted once, and the letter opener snapped in half between his fingers like a dry twig.

Raymond's shriek of pain came a full second after his knees buckled, Jax's other hand already pressing flat between his shoulder blades, folding him face-first onto the mahogany table with a force that rattled every glass on it.

"Don't," Jax said.

Just that.

One word, quiet as ever, and Raymond stopped struggling entirely.

The room stood frozen.

Diane had her hand pressed to her mouth.

Marcus hadn't moved from his chair, face gone the color of the folders in front of him.

Nobody looked at Raymond.

Nobody looked at Ethan either, not directly ... as if meeting his eyes now might make them the next name in someone's folder.

Ethan hadn't flinched.

He hadn't even stood.

"Call security," he said, voice even, almost bored. "And someone get Diane some water."

Two guards burst through the doors moments later, and Jax stepped back only once they had Raymond's wrists secured behind him, cuffed with the zip ties the building kept for exactly this kind of situation nobody ever expected to use.

Raymond didn't fight them.

The fury had drained out of him as fast as it came, leaving something smaller and more frightened in its place.

"You don't understand," Raymond muttered, not to Ethan now, not to anyone in the room ... to the floor, to the air, to whatever thought was eating him alive from the inside. "You don't know who..."

"That's enough," one of the guards said, hauling him upright.

Raymond's eyes found Ethan one last time as they dragged him toward the door.

And for just a moment, the rage was gone completely.

What was left behind was worse.

It was fear.

Real, bone-deep fear ... the kind Ethan recognized because he'd worn it himself once, standing on a rooftop with nothing left to lose.

But Raymond had plenty left to lose.

A prison sentence.

His reputation.

Whatever fortune he hadn't already burned through.

So why did he look like a man who thought prison might be the safer option?

The doors closed behind him.

The boardroom exhaled all at once ... nervous laughter, shaking hands reaching for water glasses, Diane sitting down hard as if her legs had finally given out.

Marcus was already talking about press statements, damage control, an emergency meeting with legal.

The machinery of corporate self-preservation, grinding back into motion now that the danger had been removed.

Ethan stood, buttoned his jacket, and said nothing.

Jax fell into step beside him without a word, tucking the broken halves of the letter opener into his jacket pocket ... evidence, or habit, Ethan couldn't tell which.

They walked out through a lobby full of employees pretending not to stare, past the security desk where a guard actually stood a little straighter as Ethan passed.

The balance of power in this building had shifted weeks ago.

Today I just made it official.

It should have felt like winning.

But as the elevator doors slid shut, Ethan found himself replaying the look on Raymond's face ... not the rage, not the humiliation, but that last flash of raw terror aimed at something far behind Ethan's shoulder, something that had nothing to do with prison bars or ruined reputations.

You don't know who...

Whoever Raymond had been about to name, he'd been too afraid to finish the sentence.

Ethan intended to find out exactly who that was.