Chapter 9 - The Final Choice
The crisis reached its peak when an anonymous source leaked the story to the press.
The headlines were brutal.
“The Billionaire and the Heiress of Ruin.”
“Silas Vane’s Secret Guilt.”
The board called an emergency meeting to remove me as CEO.
They offered me a deal:
leave Maya,
issue a public statement that it was a brief affair,
and keep my throne.
I stood in the boardroom,
looking at the faces of the men I had worked with for years.
They were cold,
calculating,
and empty.
They were exactly who I used to be.
“You have ten minutes to decide,
Silas,”
the chairman said.
“Is she worth a billion dollars?”
I thought about the night in the restaurant,
the way her hand had gripped my sleeve.
I thought about the painting she had made of me.
I thought about the crimson mark on the white sheets.
“She is worth everything,”
I said,
and I walked out of the room without looking back.
I went straight to the penthouse,
where Maya was waiting for me.
She had seen the news,
and her eyes were full of tears.
“You lost it all,”
she whispered,
looking at the city below.
“I didn't lose anything,”
I said,
taking her in my arms.
“I just traded a prison for a home.”
I had enough personal wealth to live a thousand lifetimes,
but I no longer cared about the power.
I had found something better.
I had found a man who could be trusted.
We packed our bags and left the city that night,
driving away from the glass and steel.
We headed for a small cottage on the coast,
a place where the only sounds were the waves and the wind.
I was no longer the billionaire Silas Vane.
I was just Silas.
May you like
And for the first time,
I wasn't afraid.
