Artemis’s POV
The conference room was a battlefield long before I stepped inside.
The air buzzed with electricity—reporters pressed shoulder to shoulder, cameras mounted on tripods, microphones shoved toward the podium like spears. The hum of voices was low and hungry, the kind of hunger that thrived on scandal and blood. They were waiting for me to fall.
A thousand things crowded my mind as I crossed the threshold. The sharp drop in the company’s stock price, the restless panic of the board, the investors baying for an explanation. My empire, my legacy, the fortune I had built with my own blood and hands—all of it trembled on a knife’s edge.
And yet, none of it mattered.
Not the money. Not the legacy. Not even the crown I might lose because of this.
The only thing that mattered was
