Chapter 4: The Corporate Guillotine
The fallout was the kind of event that resets entire industries. Within an hour, Richard Sterling was stripped of his CEO title by an emergency vote of the board, who had received the "evidence package" exactly three minutes after the live feed went public.
The news outlets were in a frenzy. “The Sterling Fall: A Patriarch’s Arrogance Leads to Massive Federal Raid.”
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Richard wasn't just losing money; he was losing his freedom. The documents he had brought to the suite to force an annulment were ironically placed right next to a federal subpoena that arrived at the door of the suite minutes later. The authorities didn't care about the annulment; they cared about the offshore accounts, the tax evasion, and the violent suppression of whistleblowers that Richard had confessed to on the live stream.
He was escorted out of the Plaza in handcuffs. He looked smaller, broken, and stripped of the aura of invincibility that had shielded him for decades. As he was pushed into the back of a black SUV, he looked up at the suite window, seeing his son and Elara looking down—not with hatred, but with the clinical detachment of people who had completed a difficult task.
