The rosewood table seemed to stretch for miles between Paman Marcus and myself. The air in the executive boardroom, previously thick with the suffocating pressure of a hostile takeover, had completely shattered. It was replaced by a cold, ringing vacuum—the kind of absolute, terrified silence that follows a localized earthquake.
Marcus sat slumped in his hand-stitched Italian leather chair, his mouth opening and closing like a suffocating fish. A thick bead of cold sweat rolled down his fleshy forehead, stinging his eye, but he didn't even possess the motor function to wipe it away. He stared at the glowing green numbers on Elara’s encrypted tablet.
$512,450,000.00 USD.
"This... this is a trick," Marcus finally stammered, his voice a hollow, reedy whisper that lacked any of its former p
