The house was too quiet. Every sound—the slow tick of the wall clock, the low hum of the refrigerator, the whisper of rain against the windows—pressed against Dwayne's skull until he thought he might break from the noise of it. He hadn't slept in two days. The papers spread across the dining table were the same ones he'd read a hundred times: performance reports, voting records, contracts. None of them could prove what he knew in his bones—that Harold was positioning Sean as his puppet, and that everything Robert had built was being gutted piece by piece.
He rubbed a hand across his face, staring at the company letterhead that used to make him proud. "Empire Brands," he muttered under his breath. The words tasted different now—tainted, almost foreign. The company had been his father's legacy, his family's empire. Now it was a weapon being turned against him.
