The leather of the Maybach's backseat was expensive, and utterly cold. To anyone else, the car was a symbol of absolute peak-market success. To me, it was a mobile isolation chamber. Outside the tinted windows, Flensburg was a blur of gray stone and steel-colored sea. The Baltic fog was rolling in, thick and suffocating, swallowing the towering harbor cranes of ZigLan Autos until they looked like the skeletal remains of giants.
I adjusted my cufflinks, the silver clicking against my skin like a countdown. My hand felt a phantom twitch, an electric spark that started at the base of my thumb and crawled toward my wrist. It was the first warning. My Agnosia was coming.
"The board is restless, Lucas," Brandon my assistant's said from the front seat, professional and muted. He didn't turn around. He knew better than to look me in the eye when the symptoms were starting. "Uncle Spencer has been lobbying the shareholders for the past 2 weeks. He's leaning heavily into the stability argument. He's claiming your health isn't just a personal matter anymore, it's a liability to the ZigLan stock price."
I didn't blink. "Spencer is a scavenger, Brandon. He's spent fifty years waiting for a carcass because he doesn't have the stomach for the hunt. He thinks if he whispers seizure loud enough, the crown will just fall into his lap."
"It's not just whispers this time," Brandon countered softly. "He's brought in Mr. Anderson. The politician has been seen at Spencer's private estate twice this week. They're forming a blockade."
I reached into the inner pocket of my charcoal suit jacket and pulled out a small, amber vial. It was the latest batch from Dr. Matthew in Mexico. The liquid inside was clear, looking as innocent as water, but it was the only thing keeping my nervous system from collapsing into a chaotic wreck of tremors.
"Let them build their wall," I muttered, my voice sounding like gravel over a frozen lake. "I'll just drive through it."
The car glided to a halt in front of the ZigLan headquarters. As the door opened, the North Sea wind hit me, biting and salt-heavy. It should have made me shiver, but the disorder had stolen that reflex. I only felt the dull, familiar ache in my marrow.
As I stepped out, a flash of red caught my eye.
In the sea of gray and black suits swarming the entrance, a woman stood near the corner of the plaza. She was draped in a coat the color of a deep, defiant crimson. She was looking up at the building, with the focused, sharp gaze of a jeweler inspecting a diamond.
For a split second, the static in my brain went silent. A localized heat, sharp and startling, bloomed in the center of my chest. It was a sensation I hadn't felt since the accident, a spark of genuine, uncalculated curiosity.
Then, the twitch in my hand returned, sharper this time. I closed my fist, burying the heat under a layer of practiced indifference.
"Lucas?" Brandon asked, stepping onto the sidewalk beside me. "The Old master is already in the conference room. He looks... tired."
Tired. That was a dangerous word in the Elliott family. If the Old Master was tired, the wolves would start biting.
"Then we shouldn't keep him waiting," I said.
As I walked through the lobby, the marble floors echoed with the rhythmic strike of my heels. Every employee I passed lowered their head. They saw the CEO who had tripled the company's valuation while burying his own father and surviving a wreck that should have left him in the dirt.
We reached the 50th floor. The doors slid open to reveal the boardroom. The air in here was different; it smelled of expensive espresso and old, fermented greed.
At the head of the table sat Grandpa Elliott, his hands resting on a cane carved from dark oak. To his left was Uncle Spencer, who was currently mid-sentence, his face flushed with a fake and theatrical concern. Aunt Emily sat beside him, while her fingers played with a pearl necklace that probably cost more than a mid-sized sedan.
"And that," Spencer was saying, "is why a transition of power isn't just a suggestion, Father. It is a necessity for the survival of..."
He stopped as I pulled out the chair at the opposite end of the table. The screech of the metal legs against the floor was the only sound in the room.
I sat down, leaning back with a slow, deliberate grace that hid the fire crawling up my spine.
"You were saying, Uncle?" I asked. "Please, don't let my liability interrupt your fairy tale. I'm eager to hear the part where you explain how your last three projects ended in a twenty-percent deficit while I was busy opening the Nile Town rigs."
The room went tomb-quiet. Spencer's jaw tightened, his face turning a deeper shade of purple.
The war for the Elliott Empire had already begun.