Chapter 11 — The Chair

By morning the story was everywhere — the images of my butchered hair, the doctored video, the word breakdown in every corporate feed.

Marius had filed the conservatorship papers overnight, claiming emergency control of our joint accounts, and locked me out of the penthouse.

He believed he had cut off my air.

He did not know that Ardent IP’s holdings sat in accounts his lawyers could not touch, entirely separate from anything with his name on it.

My father had built that wall too.