Seeing the man who had seized his arm was none other than Ace Kane, Julian Mandel didn’t feel comforted; instead, he let out a jagged, agonized roar that tore through the local chatter of the banquet hall.
“What the hell are you doing, Ace?! Let go of me!” Julian’s voice was thick with a mixture of betrayal and exhaustion. He looked at his old friend, his eyes rimmed with red. “Isn’t it enough? Haven't we been humiliated enough for one night? You want to stay here and let them keep laughing? I can’t do it, man. I’m a Broke-a*s loser with a two-million-dollar anchor around my neck. I’m done!”
Ace Kane didn’t flinch. To him, the concept of a business failure wasn’t a death sentence or a stain on one’s soul; it was merely a data point in the chaotic graph of entrepreneurship. He had seen em
