Chapter 103

• Rafael called me into the executive suite the kind of room where deals were signed, empires built, and careers ended.
• He slid a sleek ceramic mug across the table. The coffee inside was still steaming, casting faint spirals that blurred the skyline beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. I picked it up and took a sip. Bitter. Burnt. But in a boardroom like this, caffeine wasn’t about taste it was about survival.
• “Do you want to destroy her?” Rafael asked, not bothering to look up from the confidential market intelligence file he was flipping through.