Chapter 15 Shattered Glass

• Sophia sat in the empty boardroom, her mind numb as the magnitude of her defeat settled in. The room that had once been the battlefield of her ambitions now felt like a tomb, cold and desolate. She couldn’t remember how long she had been sitting there, staring at the table where moments before, her entire world had come crashing down.
• Ethan hovered nearby, his face a mixture of guilt and frustration. He had been speaking, trying to offer some kind of comfort, but his words had barely registered. Sophia was too consumed by the crushing weight of her failure, the realization that all her meticulous planning, all her sacrifices, had been for nothing.
• Finally, she found the strength to speak, her voice barely more than a whisper. “How did she know, Ethan? How did she find out?”