Morrison entered carrying two cups of coffee and the expression of a man caught between competing loyalties. He set one cup in front of Lizzy, who was seated at the head of the table, and kept the other for himself—a small act of diplomacy that didn't go unnoticed.
"The morning briefing," he said, sliding a folder across the table. "Olivia's requested that all departmental reports route through her before reaching you."
Lizzy opened the folder. Every page had been annotated in Olivia's precise handwriting—corrections, questions, budget adjustments. Her own company's operations filtered through someone else's understanding.
"She's editing my briefings now?"
"She's fact-checking them. Yesterday's numbers were off by twelve percent. If those had reached the board..." Morrison let the implications hang.
"Stop defending her." Lizzy's control cracked slightly. "She's systematically removing my authority and calling it collaboration."
Morrison sat down carefully. "Lizzy, yesterday you were crying in a boardroom. Today you're CEO of a functioning company. Maybe—"
"Maybe what? Maybe I should be grateful? Maybe I should accept that I'm not qualified to run my own inheritance?"
"Maybe you should ask yourself why she's better at this than you are."
The words hit like a physical blow. Morrison had been Anna's deputy for six years, Lizzy's ally for three. His loyalty was supposed to be unquestioned.
"Whose side are you on?"
Morrison's pause was telling. "The company's. Always the company's."
Not 'yours.' Not 'I believe in you.' The company's.
"When did I become the enemy of the company?"
"When you started treating it like a prize to be won instead of a responsibility to be earned."
Morrison's words were gentle but devastating. Because he wasn't wrong. She'd been so focused on claiming her inheritance that she'd forgotten to prove she deserved it.
"She's good at this," Morrison continued. "Really good. The department heads respect her. The board trusts her. And right now, that's what we need."
"And what about what I need?"
"What do you need, Lizzy?"
The question caught her off guard. What did she need? Power? Recognition? Respect? Or just the simple acknowledgment that she had a right to be here?
"I need to matter. I need to be more than a figurehead."
"Then stop being a figurehead. Learn what she knows. Understand why she's better at this."
Learn from her. The woman who'd taken her place before she'd even lost it.
Outside, the rain had turned into a proper London downpour. Through the conference room windows, Lizzy could see employees gathered in the lobby, waiting for the weather to clear. Some were on their phones, probably checking the news, watching GDI's stock price fluctuate with each rumor about the succession crisis.
"The markets are nervous," Morrison said, following her gaze. "Some of our clients are asking questions."
"What kind of questions?"
"The kind that end with 'maybe we should consider other options.'"
Lizzy sat motionless, staring at the annotated pages scattered across the table—each correction in Olivia's precise handwriting a reminder of her own inadequacy. The rain against the windows seemed to echo the rhythm of her thoughts: failure, failure, failure.
She had thought Morrison was her ally. She had believed that someone in this building was still on her side. But his words kept echoing: "The company's. Always the company's." Not hers. Never hers.
"I need some air," she said finally, standing abruptly. The chair scraped against the floor with a harsh sound that made Morrison wince.
"Lizzy—"
"Don't." She held up a hand. "Just... don't."
She grabbed her coat and left, her heels clicking on the marble floor like punctuation marks she couldn't control. The elevator doors opened, and she stepped inside. The ride was smooth, mechanical, indifferent. Each floor passed like a breath she didn't take.
She locked the office door behind her, breathing in the sterile chill of recycled air. The silence wasn't comforting—it was clinical, the kind that made your thoughts echo too loudly.
She walked to the bookshelf and reached for the leather-bound frame tucked behind a row of unopened annual reports. Her fingers trembled as she wiped away a thin layer of dust from the glass.
The photo showed her father at a fundraiser in Rome, bow tie askew, smiling like someone who knew every move three steps ahead. He had his arm around her—she must have been nineteen, dressed in borrowed diamonds and borrowed confidence.
He looked alive. Not just breathing, but alive in that maddening, magnetic way that always filled a room.
She ran a thumb along the edge of the frame.
"You built all this like it was a cathedral," she whispered. "And I walked in thinking I owned it."
There had been moments—small ones—when he'd tried to prepare her. Notes scribbled in the margins of reports. Comments during dinner that weren't really about food or markets. But she hadn't heard him, not fully. She'd only ever prepared for succession, not stewardship.
She set the frame down carefully.
She pulled out her phone, scrolling through her contacts until she found the name she was looking for: David Zhang. The photo showed a man with kind eyes and a gentle smile, taken during their last weekend together in Hong Kong before he'd taken the promotion to Shanghai.
David had been her father's personal assistant during his illness—the one constant presence during those final, difficult months. He'd been professional, efficient, and surprisingly compassionate. When he'd asked her to dinner, she'd said yes out of loneliness more than interest. But he'd been persistent, charming, and most importantly, he'd known her father in a way that few people had. Their relationship had been a secret from the beginning. At first because it felt inappropriate—he'd been employed by her family. Later because it was easier to keep it private, especially as David's star rose within the company. When the Shanghai position opened up, he'd been the obvious choice. Young, bilingual, and with an intimate understanding of the company's culture from his years working directly with the founder. Now, with Morrison's words still echoing in her mind, David felt like the only person in the world who might actually be on her side.
Before she could second-guess herself, she was dialing his number.
"Lizzy?" His voice was warm, slightly sleepy. It was past midnight in Shanghai.
"I'm sorry to wake you," she said, her voice breaking slightly. "I just... I needed to hear your voice."
"What's wrong? You sound upset."
"Everything's wrong. Morrison thinks I'm incompetent. Olivia's running my company better than I am. And I'm sitting here wondering if they're all right."
"They're not right," David said firmly. "You're going through a difficult transition. That doesn't mean you're not capable."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I watched you with your father. I saw how you handled his illness, how you managed his care while still trying to learn the business. You're stronger than you think."
Lizzy felt tears threatening. "I need to get out of here. This place is suffocating me."
"Then come to me," David said without hesitation. "Shanghai is beautiful this time of year. And I miss you."
"I can't just abandon—"
"You're not abandoning anything. You're taking a step back to get perspective. Sometimes distance is the only way to see clearly."
Twenty minutes later, Lizzy was on her phone booking the next flight to Shanghai. She didn't tell anyone where she was going—not Morrison, not the board, not even Rex. She just needed to disappear, to find a place where she could breathe without feeling like she was drowning. As she packed her bag, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked exhausted, defeated. But underneath the frustration, there was something else—a spark of determination that hadn't been there before.
Maybe running away wasn't the answer. But sometimes you had to retreat before you could advance. She sent only one message in her outbox: "Back soon. Don't worry."
Even she didn't know whether it was true.
Shanghai met her with a breath of moisture and static.
As she stepped outside the terminal, the city surged into her senses—warm, thick air laced with diesel, wet concrete, and something floral beneath it all. The hum of electric buses blended with the high-pitched whirr of scooters weaving through traffic. The overhead announcements echoed behind her in Mandarin and English, switching too quickly to keep up.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't polite.
It was alive.
Outside, towers of glass spiraled upward into low cloud, their surfaces slick with humidity and colored by a thousand digital screens pulsing like arteries. A street vendor nearby shouted out prices for skewers in Shanghainese, the smoke from his cart curling into the headlights of a passing Bentley. Behind it, a Tesla glided by without a sound, indifferent to the honking chaos around it.
She inhaled deeply, tasting metal and meat and jasmine. It was messy and miraculous.
David was waiting in a sleek black SUV. The moment she saw him, something unspooled inside her—like her body finally realized it could stop bracing.
He stepped out as she approached, and for a moment they just looked at each other. His hair was shorter than she remembered, and there were new lines around his eyes that made him look older, more serious. But his smile was exactly the same.
"You came," he said simply.
"I ran away," she corrected, setting down her bag.
"Same thing." He reached for her hand, his fingers warm against hers. "I wasn't sure you would."
"Neither was I." The admission surprised her. "Until I was already on the plane."
David's expression softened. "You look tired."
"I look defeated."
"You look like someone who's finally ready to figure things out." He opened the passenger door for her. "Welcome to the future."
As they sped toward the city center, Lizzy pressed her forehead lightly to the window, watching the world blur by.
They passed an ancient temple sandwiched between two mirrored office towers. A QR code was posted right on the gate—for donations or digital incense, she couldn't tell. Down an alley, a teenager sold bubble tea from a neon-lit cart while across the street a polished showroom unveiled an AI-driven car.
London whispered in marble and tradition.
Shanghai sang in algorithm and asphalt.
And somewhere inside that dissonance, Lizzy began to see something else: not escape, but possibility.