By the time the hearse turned off Lake Shore Drive and into the private Montgomery family cemetery just outside Chicago, Illinois, the sky had already decided Charles Montgomery deserved a cinematic exit.

Rain fell in a thin, relentless sheet, glittering under the gray Midwestern light, not heavy enough to soak through my coat, just enough to cling to my skin like cold static. It felt intentional, like the weather itself had been waiting for America’s favorite corporate tyrant to die before finally pressing Play on the atmosphere.

Charles would’ve loved it. “Overproduced,” he’d say, lighting a cigar he wasn’t supposed to smoke anymore. “But it’ll photograph well.”

I stood under the wrought-iron gates, hands buried in my pockets, watching a procession of black vehicles curl across the gravel like a funeral for Wall Street itself—Mercedes, BMWs, Escalades, license plates from Illinois, New York, California. Each car spat out people who had never truly cared about Charles Montgomery a day in their lives, but now absolutely had to be seen mourning him in the Chicago rain.

A woman in a feathered black hat sniffled loudly into a tissue, then angled her phone up and snapped a selfie when she thought no one was looking.

I watched her.

I watched everything.

The headlines on every screen in the country said America had lost a titan of industry. From what I could see, most of the people at his graveside were grieving the loss of proximity to his money.

I adjusted my tie and stepped forward.

Charles Montgomery—father-in-law, mentor, hurricane, headache, and the only man I’d ever seen silence a Fortune 500 boardroom with nothing but a raised eyebrow—was about to be lowered into the ground. And the sharks had started circling before the coffin even touched dirt.

The first shark spotted me.

“Lucas.”

Victor Hail, chairman of the board, glided toward me like this cemetery outside Chicago was just another conference room with better landscaping. His silver hair was perfectly in place, his suit so sharply tailored it looked like it could commit a felony in three states.

He put a stiff hand on my shoulder. His skin was cold, his smile colder.

“Terrible loss,” he said. “Tragic. Unexpected.”

Unexpected.

Charles had been sick for months. The board just hadn’t noticed, too busy counting how quickly they could start carving his empire into pieces.

I nodded. “Victor.”

His eyes flicked over my face with the quiet hunger of a man who’d given a hundred condolence speeches and meant none of them. He was hunting—for weakness, for grief, for information. For an angle.

“How’s your wife?” he asked, turning toward the front rows. “She’s… handling herself well. Strong woman.”

I didn’t answer, because I’d already seen her the second I stepped onto the cemetery grounds.

Elena stood near the front row like the cover star of a glossy New York magazine rather than the daughter of the man in the coffin. The black dress was perfect, the makeup perfect, the posture calibrated. Her chin was tilted just enough to meet the soft, overcast light of an Illinois sky.

She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. I didn’t see a single tear fall.

A photographer from a business outlet adjusted his lens and zoomed in. Elena softened her mouth, angled her jaw, and rotated her body a few degrees to the left.

Of course she did.

Victor followed my gaze and let his lips curl.

“She’ll make a very effective public face for the company.”

And there it was—the first crack in the board’s mask, hairline thin but unmistakable. Not grief. Not respect. Just assumption. Expectation. The belief that Charles Montgomery was gone and his billion-dollar kingdom was already theirs to shape, harvest, and ruin.

“We’ll see,” I said lightly.

He drifted away to shake another hand, leaving me where he expected me to be: background, harmless, unimportant.

He had no idea the future of Montgomery Industries was standing three feet away, staring at muddy Chicago soil and pretending to be invisible.

A tap on my arm pulled me back.

“Lucas!” came a nasal, overexcited voice.

Bryce Whitman. Board member. Nepotism’s favorite son. His umbrella had the Montgomery Industries logo custom-printed on it.

At a funeral.

“Crazy turnout, huh?” he said, too loud. “Lot of people loved the old man.”

“Most of them loved his balance sheet,” I said.

He barked out a laugh, completely missing the edge in my voice.

“Right. God, I knew you got it. Elena’s lucky, man. Really lucky.”

His eyes bounced all over the cemetery like pinballs—hopping over the press, the polished gravestones, the Chicago skyline in the distance like it was just another set piece.

“Hey, after all this settles, we should grab drinks,” he added, leaning in. “Talk about… you know. Changes. New directions.”

I raised a brow. “New directions?”

He nodded toward Elena, who was now speaking to a reporter, her profile angled perfectly for the camera.

“Look at that. She’s a natural. Talk about modern leadership, right? We just need to, you know… update the company. Fresh blood. New style.”

Before he could ramble further, a crisp voice cut through the rain.

“Whitman. You’re blocking the aisle.”

Margaret Shun stepped neatly between us, umbrella turned just enough to shield her and me, but not Bryce.

CFO. Razor-sharp. No nonsense. The only person on the board who didn’t look like they’d been cast from a “corrupt executive” reality show.

She looked at me directly. Her dark hair was pulled back in a simple twist, her expression cool, controlled.

“You holding up?” she asked.

“I’m trying,” I said.

She nodded once. “Charles valued you.”

“Did he ever say that?” Bryce cut in brightly.

“Yes,” Margaret said without blinking. “Frequently.”

Bryce’s mouth opened, then closed. “Huh.”

Margaret moved on. Bryce waddled after her, still talking. I stayed where I was, letting the crowd shift around me like a current.

Condolences floated in the air like cheap perfume. Business condolences. Networking condolences. PR condolences.

They were shaking hands over Charles’s grave like it was the lobby of a New York hotel before an earnings call.

Eventually the priest spoke, and the bodies reorganized themselves into something that looked like solemnity. I walked to the front row and took my place beside Elena.

She didn’t look at me.

Not when the priest praised Charles’s philanthropy.

Not when the coffin was lowered.

Not when the quiet sniffles around us grew louder.

She leaned in only once, her profile still facing a camera.

“Fix your tie,” she whispered. “We’re in every shot.”

Grief was optional. Optics weren’t.

I looked at the polished mahogany coffin, now slick with Chicago rain. Memories pressed in around me like ghosts in tailored suits.

Late-night meetings in Charles’s study. His gravel-rough laugh shaking the walls of his Lake Michigan house. The way he’d slam his hand on the table when a board member said something stupid—which was almost daily.

“Lucas,” he’d told me once, swirling whiskey at midnight while the skyline burned gold outside his window, “if those idiots ever take over, bury me twice.”

Another memory surfaced—sharper, heavier.

Charles, pale but still burning with that terrifying energy, sitting across from me in his private study, oxygen tank humming softly at his side. A stack of legal documents between us.

He had tapped them with a trembling finger, eyes locked on mine.

“They think my daughter will run this company,” he’d said. “They think they’ll puppet her.”

Then he’d jabbed his finger at my chest.

“But you. You’re the one with a brain. You’re the only one who sees them for what they are.”

Back at the graveside in suburban Illinois, the priest finished the last prayer. The crowd started to peel away, drifting toward the heated reception tent where champagne and camera flashes waited.

Elena finally looked at me.

Not with sorrow.

With calculation.

“We should go,” she said softly. “The press is waiting.”

I looked at her. Then at the board members hovering in small clusters, already whispering about “next steps.” Then at the muddy path leading to the tent, lined with umbrellas, glossy shoes, and quiet greed.

And beneath the steady whisper of Midwestern rain, something settled in my chest.

It wasn’t grief.

It wasn’t anger.

It was anticipation.

The funeral of a titan was over.

The real show hadn’t even started.

Three weeks earlier, Charles Montgomery texted me at 3:14 p.m.

Come to the house. Bring a pen.

No context. No explanation. No emoji. Just that.

An hour later I was walking through the marble foyer of his lakefront estate north of Chicago, the polished floor reflecting portraits of dead Montgomerys who all looked like they disapproved of my shoes.

The butler led me down the hallway and stopped outside a heavy wooden door.

“Mr. Montgomery is expecting you,” he said.

Charles’s private study was a place you didn’t enter without an invitation and never forgot once you had. Dark wood paneling. Floor-to-ceiling shelves. A massive desk facing a window that looked out over Lake Michigan, where the water chopped restlessly against the winter shore.

He sat in an armchair by the fireplace, wrapped in a thick robe, an oxygen tube at his nose, looking like a king who refused to abdicate even as his own body waged war against him.

“You’re late,” he grumbled.

“You texted me eight minutes ago,” I said.

“Exactly,” he shot back. “You’re eight minutes late.”

I shut the door behind me. “What’s going on?”

He ignored the question, reaching instead for a thick folder on the side table. Legal seals. Ribbons. The kind of documents that made your stomach knot before you even saw the first page.

“Sit,” he said.

I sat. He shoved the folder toward me.

“Open it.”

Inside were dozens of pages—dense legal language, signatures, stamps. The words Montgomery Industries and my name were tangled together in ways that made my pulse jump.

“Is this—”

“Yes,” he said. “Seventy-one percent.”

I blinked. “Seventy-one percent of what?”

He gave me a look. “The company, you idiot. What else would I leave you? My golf shirts?”

The room suddenly felt too small.

“Charles… that doesn’t make sense. Why me?”

He adjusted the oxygen tube, eyes burning brighter than his body had any right to allow.

“Elena,” he said slowly, “is a beautiful girl. Clever in social spaces. Good with cameras. Wonderful with the press. She knows how to smile on cue and make people think she cares about their children.”

His mouth curled.

“But business?” He snorted. “She has the strategic depth of a teaspoon.”

“She’s your daughter,” I said.

“And I love her,” he snapped. “But love doesn’t make someone a CEO.”

He leaned forward, the oxygen machine wheezing quietly.

“She picks hashtags like a general picks artillery—pure optics. If I hand her this company outright, the board will eat her alive. They will gut my life’s work and leave her bleeding on some business magazine cover with a tragic headline.”

He pointed at the documents. “You, on the other hand, watch. You listen. You see. You understand that business isn’t about noise. It’s about leverage.”

I stared at the numbers. The clauses. The signatures.

“Charles, Elena will never forgive me.”

“She won’t know,” he said. “Not until the time is right.”

“You want me to lie to her?”

“I want you to protect her,” he corrected. “From the board. From herself. From the circus that will start the minute they put me in the ground in some cold Chicago dirt.”

He picked up a second document. The paper shook in his hand, but his voice didn’t.

“These were notarized months ago. This isn’t a last-minute whim. This is strategy.”

He held out a pen—a heavy, gold-plated fountain pen engraved with the Montgomery crest.

“Sign.”

My hand suddenly felt heavy. “I… I don’t know if I want this.”

“No one ever wants responsibility,” he said. “They just discover it belongs to them.”

The fire crackled in the fireplace. Outside, Lake Michigan slapped against the shore with the dark impatience of late winter.

“Charles,” I said quietly. “This will change everything.”

“That’s the point,” he answered.

His voice softened for the first time.

“I trust you more than any man alive. More than I trust the board. More than Elena understands. If those fools get control after I die, they’ll sell the assets, chase trends like blind mice, and burn this place to the ground.”

He lifted his chin.

“You won’t let them.”

Silence pressed in. My heart pounded loud enough to drown out the sound of the oxygen machine.

Then, slowly, I took the pen.

I signed.

My name appeared again and again, ink binding me to something vast and heavy and irreversible.

When the last page was done, Charles leaned back with a satisfied breath.

“There,” he said. “Montgomery Industries will survive my death. And—if you don’t screw it up—it’ll thrive.”

He reached for his whiskey, ignoring whatever his doctors had told him, and took a sip.

“You’re going to have so much fun with them, Lucas,” he added, eyes glinting. “Especially Victor. That pompous bastard has no idea he’s about to get blindsided by the guy he thinks prints his meeting packets.”

I let out a breath that sounded a lot like a laugh.

“You’re terrifying.”

“I’m dying,” he said. “It’s different.”

As I stood and gathered the documents, he called out one last time.

“Lucas?”

I turned.

“When they find out,” he said, grin widening, “do me a favor.”

“What?”

“Enjoy it.”

The week after Charles’s funeral, Elena announced we were hosting “something small” at the penthouse in downtown Chicago.

“Just a little celebration,” she said, applying lipstick in the bathroom mirror of our high-rise, her reflection framed by the lights of the Magnificent Mile behind her. “Some board members. A few friends. Press. Influencers. Nothing huge.”

When Elena said “nothing huge,” what she meant was a full-scale PR campaign with better cocktails.

By the time the first guest arrived, the penthouse looked like it had signed a deal with a luxury brand. Dimmed chandeliers. Velvet rope at the entrance. A photographer doing slow circulations. A bartender pouring champagne flecked with gold. A DJ wearing sunglasses inside like he thought he was in LA, not Illinois.

All this less than a week after we’d put her father in the ground.

Elena stepped into the center of the room wearing a backless black dress that would photograph perfectly from any angle. She lifted a glass of champagne.

“To new beginnings,” she announced.

Flashes went off.

I stood near the balcony, holding a drink I wasn’t drinking, watching the board arrive like bees to free sugar.

Victor Hail appeared first, charming, warm, predatory. He hugged Elena for the cameras, whispering something in her ear that made her throw her head back in a laugh that was all teeth and no joy.

“CEO Elena Montgomery Ward,” Bryce shouted a few minutes later like he was announcing a Marvel superhero at Comic-Con. “Now that’s a title.”

He slapped my shoulder on his way past without really seeing me.

Margaret arrived quietly. No theatrics. She handed Elena a sealed card.

“Condolences,” she said. “And congratulations.”

Elena barely glanced at it.

“Lucas,” she called a little later, waving me over with perfectly manicured fingers. “Come stand with me for a shot.”

I stepped in. She wrapped an arm around my waist, angling her body toward the camera.

“Smile, babe,” she whispered. “Try to look like we’ve had a normal week.”

The flash popped. The camera turned away. Her arm dropped.

She drifted toward a tech influencer from San Francisco without looking back.

Perfect. Invisibility suited me.

Victor slid up beside me once the crowd’s attention shifted.

“You’ve been quiet,” he said.

“Just trying to stay out of the spotlight,” I replied.

“Of course,” he said. “Some people are built for it. Some aren’t.”

He meant Elena was. I wasn’t.

He had no idea.

Bryce appeared again, already tipsy.

“Man,” he said. “Must be weird being married to the CEO now. Don’t worry. Maybe she’ll let you fetch coffee. Or file things.”

Victor chuckled. I smiled.

“If she needs coffee,” I said, “she knows where to find me.”

They laughed, thinking they were punching down at the harmless little husband.

They didn’t realize they were kicking a live landmine.

Power is loud. Control is silent.

Tonight, I stayed silent.

Friday morning at Montgomery Industries’ headquarters on Wacker Drive felt wrong the second I stepped out of the elevator.

The Chicago skyline stretched outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, but inside, the air had the brittle chill of a building about to do something ugly.

At 9:02 a.m., my phone vibrated.

“Mr. Ward,” the assistant said, voice stiff. “The board would like to see you in the main conference room.”

“On my way.”

Employees watched me walk down the hallway with a kind of guilty sympathy, like they were passing a car accident and didn’t want to be caught staring.

The double doors to the boardroom were open.

Victor sat at the head. Margaret, Gerald, and the others lined the sides. Bryce wore a grin he couldn’t quite control.

Only one chair was empty. At the far end of the table.

“Lucas,” Victor said, that professional smile painted on his face. “Thank you for joining us.”

I sat.

“I’ll be direct,” he continued. “After reviewing our organizational needs, the board has reached a unanimous decision regarding your role.”

He paused like he wanted to hear his own echo.

“Effective immediately, your position is terminated due to internal restructuring.”

There it was.

I let out a slow breath.

Then smiled.

“Is that so?” I said pleasantly.

Something flickered in his eyes. He’d expected pleading. Outrage. Fear.

Bryce leaned in. “Hey, man,” he said, trying and failing to sound kind. “Recalibration. That’s all it is. High-level efficiency thing. Nothing personal.”

Gerald cleared his throat. “This wasn’t a casual decision, Lucas.”

“Of course not,” I said warmly. “I know how long committee decisions take.”

Victor stiffened.

“You’ll receive the standard severance package,” he said. “HR will escort you out after this meeting.”

“Escort,” I repeated softly. “No need. I remember the way.”

Bryce stared at me. “You’re… taking this well.”

“I’d say I’m taking it appropriately,” I replied.

Margaret finally met my gaze. “Elena was informed,” she said quietly. “She agreed.”

I nodded. My wife had agreed to my firing before lunch.

Naturally.

Victor laced his fingers together.

“We assumed you might have questions.”

“I don’t.”

“No protest?” Bryce blurted. “No negotiation?”

“What would I negotiate for?” I asked.

“Your job,” Victor hissed.

“Oh,” I said. “No, thank you.”

I stood, smoothing my shirt cuffs, and placed my badge on the table.

“Gentlemen. Margaret.”

I let my eyes rest on each of them, one by one.

“Good luck,” I said. “With the restructuring.”

Bryce frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you’ll figure it out,” I said.

Victor tried again. “You do understand the seriousness of this?”

“Completely,” I answered. “You just fired the majority owner of the company.”

The silence that followed was thick enough to cut.

They stared at me.

They thought I was joking.

I didn’t bother explaining.

I walked out of the boardroom, down the hallway, into the elevator, and out of the building into the bright Chicago morning.

No tears. No scene.

Just a man who knew something they didn’t.

At home, I went straight to my study, knelt by an old walnut bookshelf, and pressed my thumb against an invisible plate under the second shelf.

A small beep. A panel slid open, revealing a steel safe.

Originally Charles’s. Then mine.

“Someday this will matter,” he’d said, handing me the code.

I keyed it in. The lock clicked. Inside was a black leather folder embossed with the Montgomery crest and the faint scent of Charles’s old cologne.

Seventy-one percent.

Every notarized document. Every certificate. Every clause. Charles’s handwritten letter, blunt and unmistakable:

If they try to steal what I built, give them hell.

My phone buzzed.

“Maya,” I answered.

“Lucas,” came the cool, controlled voice of the one lawyer in Chicago you wanted on your side when billionaires got stupid. “I assume you’ve reviewed everything.”

“I have. It’s airtight.”

“Good,” she said. “I triple-checked the filings last night. If the board contests these, I will bury them under precedent until they forget their own names.”

“You have a gift,” I said.

“It’s not a gift. It’s billing.”

I leaned back.

“They fired me this morning.”

“I know.”

“Of course you do,” I said. “So. Do I flip the table yet?”

“Not yet,” she replied. “Let them dig themselves deeper. The deeper the tunnel, the more satisfying when it collapses.”

“That sounds violent.”

“That’s corporate law.”

I laughed.

“Enjoy your weekend, Lucas,” she added. “Monday will be… entertaining.”

She hung up.

It turned out she was an optimist.

By Saturday afternoon, rumors started bouncing around my phone like ping-pong balls.

Heard you had a meltdown, bro. You okay?

I read it standing over a grill in my backyard, wearing sunglasses and turning ribs like a man with nothing to worry about.

A meltdown? I’d been calmer than the Dalai Lama on Benadryl.

Another text:

Heard you screamed at Victor in the hallway.

Then:

Someone said you cried in the elevator. Hard.

Ridiculous. But revealing.

The board was so desperate to control the narrative, they’d decided to invent their own fan fiction about me.

I ignored every message, flipped the ribs, turned on the Formula 1 race, and cheered when one driver pulled off an insane overtake on the final lap.

If anyone had peeked over the fence that afternoon in this quiet Chicago suburb, they’d have seen a man happily grilling, drinking beer, and watching TV.

Not someone who’d been “destroyed” by losing his job.

Sunday evening, while the sky turned deep violet over the city, my phone lit up again.

Bryce.

I let it ring twice. Then answered.

“Bryce.”

“Lucaaas,” he drawled, sounding like he’d been drinking something expensive and terrible for his judgment. “My man. Rough week, huh?”

“I’ve had worse,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Listen, between us? People are saying… things. That you walked out like a maniac. That you didn’t even try to talk to Elena. That you’re… spiraling.”

I said nothing.

“So look,” he continued, “I talked to Victor. And Elena. And the board. And you’ll be happy to know there might be an opening for you.”

“Oh?”

“Entry-level admin,” he said proudly. “Paperwork. Printing. Maybe some spreadsheets. Nothing complicated. Baby steps, you know?”

I stared at the glass of bourbon in my hand.

“And this role reports to… you?”

“Obviously,” he said. “I’d supervise. Keep you on track. Help you stay humble. Corporate life is all about knowing your place, Lucas.”

There it was.

“I’d consider it,” I said slowly. “But before I embarrass myself begging for such a prestigious opportunity, I do have one question.”

“Shoot.”

“I heard the board’s trying to liquidate Anderson Manufacturing and sell NeuralSync.”

He stiffened. “We’re… exploring options. Why?”

“I was just looking at some numbers,” I said. “Have you considered what happens to your debt ratios when you unload a high-margin asset at the bottom of a cyclic dip? And if you dump NeuralSync too fast, you’ll trigger a talent exodus and violate the forward-merger performance covenants Charles negotiated. You’ll collapse your own R&D pipeline.”

Silence.

“I mean,” I added gently, “that’s before we even talk about how badly you’ll piss off investors like Hail Capital, who bought in explicitly because of those assets.”

“The… the… covenants,” Bryce stammered. “Right. Of course. Everyone knows those.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said. “Anyway. About the admin job. I’ll think it over.”

“Great,” he said eagerly. “Just come in early Monday. Before anyone sees you.”

Of course.

He wanted me to sneak in like a beggar.

We hung up with him thinking he’d just put Lucas in his place.

I put the phone down and looked at the neat stack of documents on my desk.

Monday.

It was time.

Downtown Chicago was steel gray Monday morning, the river running dark beneath the bridges as I pulled into the company garage.

HR director Donna Michaels waited for me near the security gates, clutching a folder like a shield.

“Lucas,” she said, trying and failing to look relaxed. “The board asked me to escort you upstairs.”

“Of course,” I said. “Lead the way.”

In the elevator, she cleared her throat.

“I wasn’t told why they wanted you here,” she said quickly. “I just… follow instructions.”

“That makes two of us,” I answered.

The doors opened on the executive floor. Margaret stood outside the main boardroom door with her arms folded.

“Morning, Lucas,” she said.

“Morning.”

Donna slipped inside to announce me. Muffled voices, tense and overlapping, spilled through the thick wood.

She reappeared. “They’re ready.”

The doors swung open.

The entire board sat around the gleaming table. Their expressions were a mix of smugness and unease, like gamblers who’d won the first hand and were now worried the dealer was cheating.

Victor’s voice snapped across the room.

“Lucas, why are you here? You no longer work for this company.”

I set my leather portfolio on the table.

“Correct,” I said. “As an employee.”

He frowned. “This is highly irregular. We can have security remove you.”

“You can,” I said. “But before you do, there’s something you need to see.”

I unbuckled the portfolio and slid the top documents into the center of the table.

Victor grabbed them with an annoyed sigh—then stopped mid-breath.

His face drained as he read the first line.

“What is this?” he whispered.

“Documentation,” I said, my voice steady. “Confirming the transfer of seventy-one percent controlling ownership of Montgomery Industries to me. Executed by Charles Montgomery. Fully notarized. Legally binding.”

The board stared.

Bryce’s mouth fell open. “Seventy-one percent? That’s— that’s—”

“Enough,” Margaret said quietly, looking at the signatures. Her eyes flashed with something like satisfaction. “If this is forged, Maya will have Lucas arrested herself.”

Victor flipped pages with shaking hands.

“This… this cannot stand,” he sputtered. “We will challenge this in court. Charles was not in his right mind.”

The speakerphone in the center of the table lit up.

An incoming call.

Hail Capital.

Victor stared at it like a snake had just appeared.

He jabbed the button. “Victoria,” he said, voice climbing. “What a… coincidence—”

“Why am I hearing,” came the cool, lethal voice of one of the most feared investors on Wall Street, “that you idiots are trying to liquidate Anderson Manufacturing without informing me?”

Victor opened and closed his mouth. “We were simply—”

“Be quiet,” she snapped. “Put Lucas on the line.”

Every head turned to me.

I pressed the button. “I’m here.”

Her tone shifted.

“Good. Tell me who is actually running that company right now.”

“I am,” I said. “Effective immediately.”

Victor slammed his palm on the table. “He cannot—”

“If Lucas says he’s in charge,” Victoria interrupted, “then he’s in charge. Margaret, are you still CFO?”

“Yes,” Margaret said, almost smiling.

“Excellent. Lucas, listen carefully. If anyone other than you holds operational control, I pull my eighteen percent and short your stock into the ground. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Good. Clean up their mess. Call me in an hour.”

The line went dead.

No one spoke.

The boardroom was silent—completely, beautifully silent.

I picked up the documents, tapped them into a straight stack, and looked at the men who had fired me three days earlier.

“If there are no further questions,” I said, “I have work to do.”

Charles’s old office looked out over the Chicago River, the skyscrapers reflected in the water like a row of knives. I walked in, feeling the familiar weight of the room. Margaret followed, closing the door behind us.

“Bring Bryce in,” I said.

Her eyebrow ticked up. “Starting there?”

“Immediately. Before he can hide anything.”

A few minutes later, Bryce stumbled into the office, already sweating.

“Lucas, my man,” he started. “I think we got off on the wrong—”

“You’re fired,” I said.

He blinked. “What?”

I slid an envelope across the desk.

“No theatrics,” I said. “No drawn-out speech. Your position on the board is terminated. HR will handle severance. Security will escort you out.”

“You can’t do that,” he sputtered. “I’ve been here twenty-three years.”

“And in those twenty-three years,” I replied calmly, “you’ve blocked more deals than you’ve closed, burned through cash, harassed junior staff, and turned this board into a country club. We’re done.”

He turned purple.

“You’ll regret this. You’ll—”

“I won’t,” I said.

Security appeared. The door shut behind him. His voice faded down the hallway.

Margaret let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like satisfaction.

“That,” she said, “felt good.”

“Don’t get used to it,” I said. “We only do that when we have to.”

Then I turned to the big screen on the wall and pulled up the asset sheet.

“Cancel the sale of Anderson Manufacturing.”

“Done,” Margaret said, tapping rapidly.

“Same for NeuralSync. It stays. And we restore its original R&D budget.”

She froze. “Victor will explode.”

“Let him,” I said. “We’re not selling off the future so the old board can polish their yachts.”

She smirked.

“Freeze all executive bonuses,” I added. “Every last one. Until the audits are done.”

“They’ll riot.”

“Good. Riots are revealing.”

Within hours, the building hummed with a new kind of electricity. Rumors shot through the thirty-plus floors like lightning.

The guy they fired owns the company.

Bryce is gone.

Bonuses are frozen.

There’s going to be an audit.

By noon, my name was all over social media. Screens in the building elevator looped business channels talking about “the secret heir to Montgomery Industries” and “the quiet son-in-law who just took control of a Fortune 500 giant in downtown Chicago.”

Hashtags bloomed:

#71Percent
#TheReturnOfLucas
#OwnerNotEmployee

Margaret’s phone buzzed.

“The press is outside,” she said, checking the window.

I stepped over and looked down.

News vans. Cameras. Microphones. Drones hovering above Wacker Drive. The whole circus.

“Let them film,” I said. “For once, something real is happening in this building.”

By midafternoon, my phone lit up with a name I’d been expecting.

Elena.

I stared at the screen for a second.

Then picked up.

“What,” she snapped, “do you think you’re doing?”

Her voice was shaking with rage.

“You humiliated me. Do you understand that? I walked into a meeting this morning and learned my husband owns the company and never told me. The board is furious. The press is calling my office nonstop. How could you do this to me?”

“To you?” I repeated calmly.

“Yes, to me!” she cried. “You made me look like an idiot. Like I didn’t even know what was happening in my own family. In my own company. Did you enjoy that?”

I leaned back in Charles’s old chair.

“The board didn’t humiliate you, Elena,” I said quietly. “I didn’t either. You did that yourself.”

She sucked in a breath. “What did you just say?”

“You let them use you as a prop. You posed for cameras, memorized hashtags, practiced your ‘CEO face’ in the mirror. You fired your own husband because they told you it would look strong. You never once asked what your father actually put in writing.”

“I trusted you,” she snapped. “I trusted my father. I trusted the board.”

“In that order,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

“You’re unbelievable,” she said, voice breaking. “You don’t care who you hurt as long as you win.”

“I care very much,” I answered. “That’s why I’m doing what your father asked me to do. Protect the company from the people who care more about photo angles than balance sheets.”

She went quiet.

“This isn’t over,” she whispered finally. “You and I—we’re not okay. Not after this.”

“I know,” I said.

The line went dead.

For a moment, the weight of it all pressed down—the company, the board, the investors, the marriage that might never recover.

Then I exhaled and turned back to my desk.

There were bigger fires to put out.

The board challenged my ownership in court the next day.

Of course they did.

The Cook County courthouse was cold, marble, and indifferent when Margaret and I walked in. Reporters lined the hallway, cameras flashing as we passed.

Inside, Victor sat at the plaintiff’s table, flanked by suits who thought a thousand-dollar tie could compensate for a weak case. Bryce wasn’t there. His lawyers were.

Maya stood at our table, calm and deadly.

Victor’s attorney launched into his argument.

“Your Honor, we contend that Mr. Montgomery was not of sound mind when he allegedly transferred seventy-one percent ownership to his son-in-law. These documents—”

Maya stood.

“That’s a serious allegation,” she said. “We’ll address it directly.”

She slid a thick packet onto the evidence cart.

“First,” she said, “certified medical records from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, confirming that Mr. Montgomery was in full cognitive health on each date corresponding to these documents.”

She passed them up.

“Second, sworn statements from his treating physicians. Third, video recordings—each notarized—of Mr. Montgomery discussing his succession plan in detail.”

She lifted a tablet.

“Fourth,” she added, almost casually, “a recording of Mr. Montgomery solving a high-level logic puzzle in eight minutes on the same day he signed the primary transfer file.”

The judge watched as Charles appeared on screen—older, thinner, but eyes still bright, hands steady as he filled in a complex grid on a tablet.

No hesitation. No confusion. No sign of a man who didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

Maya turned back to the judge.

“The board’s claim that he was mentally unfit is not only unsupported,” she said. “It’s ridiculous. They simply don’t like who he chose.”

Victor’s lawyer tried to speak again. The judge held up a hand.

“I’ve seen enough.”

He shuffled the documents. Looked at Charles on the screen one more time. Then looked at me.

“This court recognizes the transfer as valid,” he said. “Seventy-one percent ownership of Montgomery Industries belongs to Mr. Ward. Effective immediately.”

His gavel came down.

And just like that, it was over.

The fight they thought would save them had finished backing me with a stamp from the state of Illinois.

Victor sagged in his seat. Bryce’s lawyers whispered furiously. Reporters ran for the hallway to file their stories first.

Maya closed her briefcase.

“Told you,” she murmured.

I let out a breath that felt like it had been lodged in my chest for weeks.

Back at headquarters, we moved.

The corrupt board members? Gone.

The ones who’d treated Montgomery Industries like their personal ATM? Removed.

The rest sat through the most brutal meeting of their lives, listening as Margaret and I laid out a new structure: transparent, audited, ruthless only toward incompetence.

Executive bonuses tied directly to performance.

Independent compliance officers.

Ten-year backward audits.

No more backroom kickbacks. No more secret handshakes in Illinois steak houses.

They could either adjust or leave.

A few resigned.

Most stayed.

Fear was an incredible motivator.

We scheduled a meeting with our largest outside investor—Hail Capital. Which meant one thing:

Victoria.

Her office overlooked the river from the opposite side of downtown, sleek glass and cold metal, Chicago’s version of a throne room.

She walked into the conference room at exactly 9:00 a.m., no assistants trailing her, no wasted movement.

“Lucas,” she said, taking a seat. “Convince me.”

Margaret and I walked her through the new structure, the audit plan, the long-term growth strategy. Numbers. Timelines. Risks. Safeguards.

Victoria listened without interrupting, eyes flicking between the screen and our faces.

When we finished, she leaned back.

“I backed Charles because he understood two things,” she said. “Leverage and discipline. He didn’t flinch when people screamed. He didn’t chase trends. He built.”

Her gaze sharpened.

“From what I’ve seen this week, you understand those things too.”

She rested her hands on the table.

“If you stay in control, I will keep my eighteen percent in. More than that, I will use my influence to support your expansion. But if you ever let that board of clowns you inherited regain control, I pull out and short you publicly.”

“Fair,” I said.

Her mouth tiled at the corner. “Good answer.”

We shook hands.

The alliance was real.

Between my seventy-one percent and her eighteen, the old board’s power was not just broken.

It was irrelevant.

That night, Chicago glittered outside Charles’s old window.

I sat alone in his chair, the leather worn smooth by decades of decisions, the city reflected in the glass like a second universe.

On the desk was a narrow box I’d found hidden behind a row of books: an aged bottle of bourbon he’d been saving.

“Pappy Van Winkle,” I read on the label.

Of course.

I poured a small amount into one of his old crystal glasses and watched the amber liquid catch the city lights. The scent was rich, warm, patient.

Outside, the river snaked through downtown, flanked by towers of glass and steel. The same skyline that had watched Charles build an empire now watched me rebuild it from the bones.

This wasn’t revenge, not really.

Revenge would’ve been messy. Loud. Cheaper.

This was something else.

Correction.

Restoration.

The taming of an American giant that had drifted into the wrong hands.

I thought of Charles’s voice in that lakefront study, telling me to let them underestimate me. I thought of Elena’s shaking words on the phone. Of Victor’s face when he realized he’d fired the majority owner. Of Bryce being escorted out of the building he’d treated like a country club.

I thought of the employees who had nothing to do with any of it and just wanted a job that wouldn’t vanish overnight because a board member needed a new yacht.

The glass felt cool between my fingers.

“To legacy,” I murmured. “To leverage. And to what comes next.”

The bourbon burned just enough on the way down.

Out there, in the glow of Chicago’s night, the city kept moving. Cars streamed along Lower Wacker. Office windows flickered out one by one.

In here, for the first time, the noise in my head was quiet.

The work ahead was heavy. There would be more battles—inside and outside the company. There would be negotiations, acquisitions, temptations to cut corners and “play the game.”

I had no intention of playing it their way.

Charles hadn’t handed me seventy-one percent to maintain their broken system.

He’d handed it to me to break it.

I set the empty glass down on the desk, next to his old pen.

This wasn’t the end of anything.

It was the first clean page.

And I, Lucas Ward, sitting in a Chicago office that had once belonged to a titan, finally understood what he’d really given me.

Not just a company.

Not just power.

A chance to do it right.