Breakfast continued and ended in a deafening silence. Elena did not utter a single word. She sat erect in her chair, her back straight, radiating an aura of cold defiance. She didn't touch her phone, technically adhering to Ethan's first term, but her soul was elsewhere. Ethan could see it. He could feel the distance between them, which was no longer just about Nathan, but also about a new fear and hatred directed squarely at him.
Ethan finished his coffee in silence, not forcing a conversation. He had made his statement. Now, he had to give it time to sink in. When he was done, he placed his napkin on the table, the linen fabric making not the slightest sound on the polished mahogany.
"I'm leaving," he said, his voice neutral and professional.
He didn't wait for a reply. As he walked out of the dining room that felt like a frozen battlefield, he could feel Elena's glare boring into his back.
The drive in the Rolls-Royce to the city center felt like a form of decompression. The air in the mansion had been heavy, thick with suffocating, unspoken emotions. But as soon as the car glided onto the bustling highway, Ethan consciously pushed the "Elena problem" into a locked box in his mind. He had other wars to win today, wars in a territory he completely dominated.
The moment he strode into the lobby of the towering Riels Tower, his transformation was complete. His jaw was set, and his eyes, which that morning had held an ice storm, were now as calm and deep as the Arctic Ocean—cold, calculating, and hiding an immense power beneath the surface. Employees greeted him with respect and a hint of fear. Here, he was not the rejected husband; he was Ethan Riels, the CEO. He was the king in his kingdom.
"Good morning, Mr. Riels," his executive assistant, Evelyn Reed, greeted him as he stepped out of the private elevator on the top floor. Evelyn was a woman in her thirties, exceptionally intelligent, with a sharp gaze that missed no detail. "Marcus Thorne has made his move. His open letter was released an hour ago."
"Sooner than I expected," Ethan replied as he walked toward the boardroom, not breaking his stride. "Let me guess. He's questioning management efficiency in the Advanced Robotics division?"
Evelyn raised an eyebrow slightly, impressed as always. "Precisely, sir. He's accusing us of spending too much on unprofitable long-term research."
Inside the boardroom, his entire core team was waiting with tense faces. "Thorne is a vulture, not a visionary," Leo Santana snarled from his seat. "He wants us to panic and sell the division so he can liquidate its assets."
For the next two hours, Ethan demonstrated why he was feared. He calmly and systematically dismantled every one of Thorne's potential attacks.
"His attack on the research division is merely a diversion," Ethan explained, his calm voice cutting through the panic in the room. "What he's actually after are the minor properties and patents tied to that division. He thinks we haven't noticed." He looked at his team, one by one. "Evelyn, prepare the performance data for the last three years, privately show our key investors the hidden ROI from our research. Leo," he turned to his best friend, "call your contact at the Wall Street Journal. I want a story on how Thorne destroyed two previous companies with the same tactic spread far and wide by tomorrow morning."
One by one, everyone in the room nodded and moved to action, leaving Ethan alone in a powerful silence.
He stood from his chair and walked to the glass wall of his office that overlooked the entire city. From here, he could see everything. He had just won the first battle in a billion-dollar corporate war. He was the undisputed master of all he surveyed.
However, as his gaze fell upon the empty silver photo frame on the corner of his desk—a frame he had intentionally set aside for his wedding photo—all feelings of superiority evaporated.
He could control the stock market, he could crush his rivals, he could build an empire. But he couldn't get a woman to have breakfast with him without hatred in her eyes.
His greatest battle wasn't in this boardroom, but in his own home. And for the first time that day, the shark felt like he was drowning.