The aftermath of the board meeting was a quiet storm. The stock, which had wobbled on the news of the succession dispute, took another sharp dip on the leaked rumors of "internal family conflict over the heir's welfare." The phrase "joint guardianship" was a match thrown into the dry tinder of market speculation. Our penthouse war room, which had been a hub of frantic energy, now felt like the site of a recent detonation. The silence was heavy with the dust of defeat.
Sterling was a ghost haunting the machine. He spent hours staring at market data, his face illuminated by the cold blue light of the screen, his expression a mask of stone. The "Cold War" between us had become our reality. We moved around each other with the careful, empty politeness of strangers, the space between us charge
