But the story didn’t end in that driveway.

Because when you burn a rotten structure to the ground, something new always takes its place.

Chapter 5: The Balanced Ledger

Six months later, the morning sun spilled like liquid gold across the gleaming hardwood floors of my new penthouse apartment.

It was a sprawling, modern space overlooking the city river, and every single brick, beam, and piece of furniture in it was paid for solely by my own capital.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, cradling a mug of black coffee, watching the city wake up.

The fallout from the Moretti party had been of biblical proportions.