2025-07-07 06:53:49The boardroom at Dawson Holdings was silent—unnaturally so. The kind of silence that came just before a storm ripped through the room and tore everything apart. Derek stood at the head of the obsidian table, shoulders squared, jaw clenched. His eyes, sharp and unyielding, scanned the room full of men in polished suits and curated smiles.
They had underestimated him. Still did.
“I’ve read through the Valenci deal,” Derek said, his voice steady. “We’re pulling out. Effective immediately.”
A few gasps echoed. Mr. Callahan, the CFO, blinked like he hadn’t heard right. “With all due respect, Mr. Dawson… sir, we’ve invested—”
“Five point six million dollars,” Derek cut in, already turning pages. “Into a shell company run by Vincent Tran, who is currently being investigated for fraud in Singapore and Switzerland. Did no one bother to do due diligence?”
A tense pause followed. Callahan’s mouth opened. No words came out.
“I did,” Derek answered himself coldly. “Last night. Alone.”
Silence turned to discomfort. Eyes averted. Suits shifted in chairs. Derek slammed the file shut. “From now on, I don’t need people who smile and nod. I need people who dig. You either come clean, or get cleaned out.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Power no longer needed noise.
And he knew exactly what had gone wrong—they wanted him to fail.
He could see it clearly now. These weren’t allies. They were vipers in silk. Loyal to his late father, maybe. Loyal to his grandfather, more likely. But to him? To the new President? They’d rather see the empire crash than be led by the ‘poor bastard’ who married up.
He knew their whispers. “The charity case.” “The houseboy president.” “The mistake.”
They didn’t know he’d grown up learning to listen more than he spoke. They didn’t know what poverty teaches you—how to read a room before it devours you.
And now, they would learn.
Derek’s office was vast, but the view felt empty. Glass stretched across the city, but it didn’t show you the shadows behind doors. Behind loyalty. Behind fake smiles.
He picked up his phone. Dialed.
“Lena,” he said, voice low. “Run background checks on Callahan. Anderson. The whole advisory circle. Off-record. And I want the real kind. Dig until you hit something.”
“Yes, sir,” his assistant said immediately. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Find out who’s leaking my boardroom decisions to the press. I want names, not guesses.”
He hung up and leaned back. His reflection stared at him from the glass.
He looked the part now—tailored Tom Ford suit, a Rolex that cost more than his childhood apartment block. But the eyes were still the same. Quiet. Watchful. Hungry.
Just then, the door clicked open.
Tahlia.
Her perfume hit before her voice. A scent he used to love—before it smelled like betrayal.
“You’re hard to reach these days,” she said, gliding in like she owned the air between them. “Mr. President.”
Derek didn’t move. “I’m busy. State your business.”
“Come on, Derek,” she pouted playfully. “Is that how you speak to your wife?”
“Ex-wife,” he corrected. “Soon, legally.”
Her smile cracked slightly, but she masked it with a soft laugh. “You’re really going through with it, huh?”
Derek stood and walked toward the window. “What do you want, Tahlia?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she walked to his desk, traced her finger along the edge like she used to trace his jaw when she wanted something.
“I made a mistake,” she said finally. “I was scared. You weren’t the man I married. You were… drowning. And I couldn’t carry us both.”
“No,” Derek said coldly, turning. “You jumped ship. You didn’t drown with me. You handed me the weights.”
Tahlia flinched.
He continued, “You didn’t just leave, Tahlia. You humiliated me. Let your mother walk all over me. Replaced me with a singer who can’t even spell fidelity.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “I didn’t know you’d… become this.”
“That’s the thing,” Derek said, his tone flat. “I was always this. You just never looked.”
She reached for his hand, voice soft. “But I’m looking now.”
He pulled away.
And with that, she realized: the old Derek was gone.
Later that evening, Derek met with Grant Maddox—one of the few men he trusted. They sat in a quiet bar downtown, far from corporate glass and boardroom traps.
“You were right,” Derek muttered, nursing his scotch. “They’ve been sabotaging deals from the inside.”
Grant leaned back. “They were betting you’d be too green. Too emotional. You didn’t come through the pipeline. You were forced in.”
Derek chuckled humorlessly. “They think I’ll crack.”
Grant leaned forward, eyes sharp. “So show them you won’t.”
Derek nodded. “Time to flush them out.”
The trap was simple.
He leaked a fake expansion project—‘Dawson Pacific’—to only three people. A plan that didn’t exist. A move that would cost billions if real.
Two days later, the press had it.
And just like that, he had his mole.
Callahan.
But what Derek didn’t expect… was that the betrayal went even deeper.
Lena’s voice came through his office speaker a week later, trembling slightly. “Sir… we found something else.”
“Go on,” Derek said.
“There’s a private account. Offshore. Linked to Callahan. But there are deposits… made from someone in your own family.”
He stilled. “Who?”
She hesitated. Then, “Your uncle. Leonard Dawson.”
A beat.
Derek’s eyes darkened.
Leonard—his late father’s brother. The one who vanished after the funeral. The one who had refused to recognize Derek as a ‘true Dawson.’
The one who always believed he should’ve inherited the throne.
So it wasn’t just sabotage.
It was war.
And it was just beginning.
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Chapter 26: The Silent Betrayal
The council chamber was too quiet. Derek could hear the ticking of the ancient clock fixed above the arched doorway, each second echoing like a hammer striking his chest.The round table before him gleamed with polish, though it felt more like a battlefield than a place of dialogue. Across from him sat men and women who carried dynasties in their names, their legacies stretching back centuries. They wore masks of calm, but Derek could feel the disdain beneath their words, their unspoken question: What right does he, the forgotten heir, have to sit among us?He did not flinch. He met their eyes one after another, cold, unblinking, letting silence become his ally.“You summoned us, Derek,” said Lord Harlan, the silver-haired head of one of the most powerful branches of the dynasty. His voice was smooth but carried a sting. “I trust you have something worthwhile. It’s not our custom to dance around with words.”“I don’t dance,” Derek said, his voice hard as stone. “I make moves. And toda
Chapter 25: The Silent Betrayal
The night was thick with silence, broken only by the distant hum of the city that never really slept. Derek sat alone in his study, the dim light of the desk lamp spilling over stacks of documents, dossiers, and maps. Every line he read, every file he touched, only deepened the pit in his stomach. Enemies everywhere. Traitors closer than he thought. And now, the empire he had only just begun to reclaim was being hollowed from the inside.But what shook him most wasn’t the chaos outside. It was the quietness inside his own home. For days now, Serena had been… distant. She smiled less. She avoided his gaze when she thought he wouldn’t notice. There was a coldness in her touch that left Derek restless at night. He told himself she was tired, that the weight of their battles had finally settled on her fragile shoulders. But tonight, something told him otherwise.He closed the file and leaned back, eyes tracing the cracks in the ceiling. If betrayal comes, it won’t come with a roar. It wil
Chapter 24 – Shadows in the Smoke
The blast still echoed through the walls of Dawson Tower as smoke poured into the boardroom. Alarms screamed overhead, red lights flashing like a heartbeat in crisis. Board members scrambled for the exits, their expensive suits and dignity abandoned in panic.But Derek Dawson did not move. His eyes were fixed on the side door, where a figure had slipped away seconds before the chaos.“Mason!” Derek barked.“I saw them,” Mason growled, drawing his firearm from under his jacket. “This way!”The two men pushed through the smoke, ignoring the shouts behind them. Tahlia’s voice rose above the din—“Derek, wait!”—but he didn’t turn back. If she was innocent, then someone had gone to great lengths to frame her. And if she was guilty, then the traitor who just vanished might be the proof he needed either way.The hallway outside was a warzone—flames licking from a ruptured vent, sprinklers hissing overhead, smoke blurring vision. Security personnel were already racing toward the blast zone, bu
Chapter 23 – Whispers of Betrayal
The night in Dawson Tower was unusually quiet. Too quiet. Derek could feel it in his bones as he walked through the top-floor corridor, the leather soles of his shoes echoing against polished marble. Outside, the city glowed beneath the curtain of midnight, but inside the tower, there was a silence that pressed on his chest like an unseen weight.He paused by the glass wall, his reflection staring back at him—hard eyes, tired lines, but sharper than ever. A man who had once been discarded now stood at the helm of an empire. Yet power had a way of drawing shadows closer, and Derek knew tonight those shadows would whisper louder than ever.His phone buzzed in his pocket. A secure line. Only three people had the code.He answered. “Derek Dawson.”“Sir,” came the hushed voice of his head of security, Mason. “You need to hear this in person. It’s about the board meeting tomorrow. And about someone close to you.”Derek’s grip tightened on the phone. “Where are you?”“The sub-level archives.
Chapter 22- SHATTERED CROWN
The boardroom smelled of power and betrayal.Derek sat at the head of the obsidian table, the walls lined with towering windows that offered a sweeping view of the city he had fought so hard to claim. Yet the room felt smaller, suffocating. Every gaze fixed on him carried a hidden weight—expectation, fear, or something far darker.“Gentlemen,” Derek’s voice cut through the thick silence, low and commanding, “we are here to secure the legacy my father built. But I must ask—whose loyalty lies with this dynasty, and whose loyalty has already been sold?”A ripple of unease moved through the room. One of the directors, a gray-haired man who had once clasped Derek’s shoulder in paternal encouragement, shifted uncomfortably. Derek noticed. He noticed everything.Before anyone could answer, the double doors at the end of the chamber banged open. A woman strode in with the confidence of someone who knew she belonged—even though she hadn’t been invited.It was Evelyn.Gasps broke out around the
Chapter 21: Echoes of Betrayal
The chill in the room was nothing compared to the frost settling over Derek’s heart.He stood motionless, fists clenched at his sides, as the private investigator laid the final photo on the mahogany table. It was grainy, but unmistakable — Alina, holding hands with Sebastian Harrow, the same man who had tried to bankrupt Dawson Holdings six months ago. The same man who Derek had once punched during a hostile board meeting for threatening his family’s legacy.Now, that snake was back — with Alina.“You’re telling me this was taken two days ago?” Derek asked, voice low and dangerous.“Yes, sir,” the investigator nodded. “Outside the Langford Hotel. They spent nearly three hours inside.”Three hours.Derek’s jaw tightened until pain bloomed up his temple. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. For a moment, the world tilted and spun, and all the control he had fought so hard to regain in the last few weeks unraveled like loose thread.Alina. The one woman who had sworn she’d never betray
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