[POV: Sofia Lanka]

"Get out of the chair, Jack. It isn’t yours anymore. In fact, nothing in this building, from the mahogany desk to the air filtration system, belongs to a man named Monroe."

Sofia stood at the threshold of the grand boardroom, her voice a calm, chilling anchor in a room drowning in panic. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the Monroe Group headquarters offered a panoramic view of the city, but inside, the atmosphere was thick with the scent of expensive cologne and cold sweat. The digital ticker on the far wall was a jagged line of crimson, frozen at a flat zero. The silence that followed her statement was...