The Fall

The numbers didn't lie.

I watched the screens in my office, watching five years of work bleed out in real time. Black Industries stock had dropped forty percent in six hours. Our proprietary code had leaked. Our biggest contracts had vanished overnight. And someone, someone very specific, had orchestrated all of it.

"Asher." My COO, Sophie Reyes, stood in the doorway. Her face told me everything I needed to know. "The board is calling an emergency meeting."

"Let them call."

"They're talking about selling."

I turned from the screens. Outside my window, the Dominion City skyline glittered with the lights of a hundred corporations. Lennox Tower dominated the view, as it always had. As Barrett Lennox had always intended it to.

"Selling to whom?" But I already knew.

Sophie's expression confirmed it. "Three offers came in. All within the last hour."

Coordinated. Professional. This wasn't market panic, this was assassination.

I'd built Black Industries from nothing.

Not an exaggeration. I'd grown up in the outer districts, where people like me were supposed to wear collars and kneel for the elite. Instead, I'd scraped my way into tech, then finance, then power. Every suit I owned was a declaration: I would never be owned.

The collar they'd expected me to wear by now? I'd melted it down and used the platinum to fund my first server farm.

Five years later, Black Industries was worth three billion. Had been worth three billion.

Now my empire was bleeding out while I watched.

The board meeting was a funeral.

Eight faces around the table, each calculating how to survive my downfall. I'd handpicked these people. Trusted them. Now I could see them positioning for the exit.

"We have three acquisition offers," said Margaret Chen, head of our legal team. "Two are lowball, they're vultures. But one is substantial."

"Which one?"

She wouldn't meet my eyes. None of them would.

"Lennox Industries."

The name landed like a grenade.

Barrett Lennox. My rival for five years. The old money prince who'd watched me rise with barely concealed contempt. He'd tried to acquire me twice before, legitimate offers, which I'd rejected with extreme prejudice.

Now he was circling the corpse.

"No."

"Asher..."

"I said no."

"The alternative is bankruptcy." Margaret finally looked at me. "Our contracts are gone. Our code is public. If we don't sell, we dissolve."

I thought about my employees. Three thousand people who'd believed in what I was building. Who'd trusted me to be different from the collar-wielding elite who ran this city.

"What are his terms?"

That night, I sat alone in my penthouse.

Not as impressive as it sounds. I'd bought the place cheap when the previous owner went bankrupt, poetic, in retrospect. The view of the city felt different now. Less like conquest, more like a reminder of how far I had to fall.

My tablet chimed. Private message.

From: Barrett Lennox Re: A more personal discussion

My office. Tomorrow, 9am. I'd prefer to discuss terms without your board present.

I should have deleted it. Should have told him exactly where he could shove his personal discussion.

Instead, I typed back: Fine.

Because the truth was, I had no leverage. No options. No way out except through him.

And Barrett Lennox knew it.

Sleep didn't come.

I kept running scenarios. Legal maneuvers. Counter-acquisitions. Allies who might help.

Nothing worked. Whoever had sabotaged me had done it perfectly, every escape route closed before I even knew I needed one.

By dawn, I'd accepted the reality.

I was going to walk into Barrett Lennox's office and beg for the death of everything I'd built. And he was going to enjoy every second of it.

The only question was the price.