Chapter 104

• The fallout after Vivian’s public challenge was swift and brutal.
• She might’ve retained her title on paper, but in the eyes of Titan Global’s senior executives and board advisors, she was all but dismissed. The VPs who once backed her now avoided eye contact in meetings, their body language cold, clipped, disinterested. I felt it in the way they excluded her from strategy briefings, the way they no longer deferred to her insights during projections. Whispers floated through the corridors like smoke soft enough not to be quoted, sharp enough to sting.
• Still, the team she had built the three hundred employees from her division who had stood by her during the Fawnrun acquisition remained loyal. To them, she wasn’t the woman who had lost face in front of me. She was the one who had secured their bonuses, fought through Titan’s most hostile acquisition to date, and delivered rewards they hadn’t seen in years. They stayed because she had once won. And more importantly, they shared a secret with her that no one else knew and none of them would ever betray it.