This whole situation? It’s laughable. Petty. Beneath you. And yet it’s the kind of spark that, if you don’t stomp it out right now, could set your entire world on fire. You can feel it—deep in your bones—this tiny domestic crisis has the power to topple empires.

Your empire.

You’re not just powerful. You’re mythic. Beyond billionaire, beyond trillionaire—those numbers are children’s toys at this point. Economists made new terms just to describe what you’ve become. Governments don’t fear God; they fear losing your funding. Nations run on your lithium, your chips, your satellites, your patents. You’re the oxygen in their economy. Without you? They suffocate.

And you didn’t get here by playing nice.

Your past is a graveyard paved with favors. You bought senators the way other men buy coffee. CEOs fell at your feet, some willingly, some because their brakes mysteriously failed on a highway at 3 a.m. You underpay your workers to their bones, squeeze them until they’re hollow. Unions mysteriously collapse. Whistleblowers go silent—permanently or financially, whichever comes first.

You turned charity into a laundering machine, philanthropy into a PR shield, and innovation into a weapon. You’ve bribed judges, bought police chiefs, blackmailed ambassadors, installed puppet ministers. There’s a child somewhere across the ocean mining cobalt in a pit, and his backbreaking labor adds exactly 0.001% to your net worth each day.

And you sleep fine. Mostly.

Maybe that’s why Eve always haunted you.

Your wife—the one person you couldn’t corrupt. She was your anchor before you started drowning people to stay afloat. She was your moral compass before you ripped the compass apart and melted it into a new microchip.

Eve was the girl who used to write your name on her notebooks with hearts around it. The girl who stole money from her own father so your first startup didn’t die. The girl who saw a future for you before you did. And now? She’s a ghost wandering your marble mansion, wearing guilt like perfume.

You see it in her eyes every day—this place, your life, disgusts her. The hitmen. The cover-ups. The “accidents.” The victims you bury under NDAs. The way you’ve turned the world into your playground and graveyard all at once.

She doesn’t speak to her friends anymore. She doesn’t talk to her family. She lives in silence, trapped in a palace built on bones. And everyone knows the truth: guilt is heavier than gold, and you’ve buried her in tons of it.

Today, something inside her broke.

“Your wife, sir.” Odette’s tone is flat, efficient—she never wastes emotion on you. She hands you an iPad, and the screen lights up with a countdown. A scheduled livestream. Public. Global. Irreversible.

Eve is planning to expose everything.

Your blood doesn’t run cold—it detonates.

You know Odette is watching your reaction like a hawk, calculating, already predicting which moves you’ll make. She’s the only person who’s ever matched your ruthlessness beat for beat. Your twin flame in corruption, the shadow that follows you everywhere.

“I’ve called Henry,” she says.

Henry. Your blade in the dark. Your silent executioner. The man who’s cleaned up more of your mistakes than you can count.

Odette folds her hands neatly, like she’s presenting you a spreadsheet. “Just in case.”

And here’s the twisted part—she’s right. Eve is a loose end. She always has been. Morality is a liability, and she carries it like a disease.

But she’s also your beginning. Your origin story. The one person who believed in you before you became… this.

You feel something you haven’t felt in years: dread. Not of losing your empire, not of the public backlash, not of prison—no, you’ve bribed your way past worse.

You’re terrified of losing her.

Because if Eve dies, there’s no one left who remembers you before the corruption. No one left who knows the boy you used to be.

You check the tracker—of course you have one on her. Your paranoia is legendary. Every asset must be locatable. And whether you admit it or not, Eve is the most valuable asset you’ve ever had.