The night outside the penthouse was heavy with the promise of rain, the sky a dark canvas with a few fleeting streaks of lightning. Inside, Julian Blackwood stood in front of his desk, his back rigid, staring out the window as if looking for some kind of divine intervention. The city lights below flickered like stars on the horizon, but he couldn’t see any beauty in it tonight. The game was closing in on him, and all he could focus on was the impending crisis.
His phone buzzed incessantly on the desk, a series of messages from his legal and PR teams. Julian didn’t reach for it. He knew what they said. They had been advising him to concede, to back down, to give up the fight.
But that wasn’t an option.
Julian had spent years building this empire, and now everything he cared about—everyth
