Chapter 7

The corridor was quiet, the hum of the HVAC the only sound. Sarah walked slowly, her heart a steady, patient drum in her chest. She could feel the eyes of the board members on her back through the glass wall of the meeting room, could feel them watching her as she walked away, a woman who had just taken everything they thought belonged to their president.

She did not look back.

In the meeting room, she had won. She had said the words, laid out the documents, made her claim. The board had listened. The board had believed her—or at least, they had done the math, calculating which side their bread was buttered on. But as she walked down the corridor toward her father's office—her office now—she knew that winning was not the same as being done. There would be lawyers. There would be challenges. Richard would not go quietly, not without a fight, not without trying to take something with him on his way out.

The corner office was exactly as she had left it, vast and silent, the mahogany desk gleaming, the framed photographs still on the wall. Richard's photographs. She walked around the desk and sat down in the chair, and she allowed herself one long, slow breath.

She thought about her father, the man who had spent his life building something she had only come to understand in pieces. She thought about the trust, the one he had forced her to sign, the one she had resented as a young woman because she thought it meant he didn't trust her. She had been wrong. He had been protecting her, the way he had always protected her, in his quiet, careful way.

She thought about Richard, about the fifteen years she had spent beside him, watching him, learning him, enduring him. She thought about the years she had let him believe he was in control, believing that keeping the peace was easier than starting a war.