Dr Reeves's office had lost its soft-focus comfort. Two weeks after the MRI, the space felt clinical, sterile, stripped of the polite fiction that this was anything other than a medical verdict being delivered. Elizabeth sat across from the neurologist, Dr Sarah Hammond, whose reputation preceded her like a shadow. If you were consulting with Hammond, you were consulting about death.
"Glioblastoma multiforme," Dr Hammond said, her voice carrying the practised gentleness of someone who'd delivered this news too many times. She turned the laptop screen toward Elizabeth, showing cross-sections of her brain illuminated in false colour. White lesions scattered across grey matter like stars in a dying constellation. Grade IV. The most aggressive form.
Elizabeth studied the images with the same analytical detachment she'd once applied to quarterly reports. Her brain-the organ that had built an empire, orchestrated the destruction of competitors, calculated every move with ruthless precision-was killing itself.
"Prognosis?" Elizabeth's voice was steady. Clinical. The same tone she'd used when discussing Morrison Industries' inevitable collapse.
"Without treatment, six months. With aggressive intervention, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, perhaps eighteen months to two years. But Elizabeth..." Dr Hammond leaned forward slightly, her expression shifting from professional to something almost human. "I need you to understand what that time will look like. This type of tumour affects personality, cognition, and impulse control. You may experience significant behavioural changes."
"I've already experienced them," Elizabeth replied, thinking of the migraine-induced vulnerability, the rage that surfaced without warning, the cracks in her carefully constructed armour. "The question is whether treatment will slow the progression."
"It will buy you time. Whether that time is worth the cost..." Dr Hammond's pause was heavy with meaning. "That's a decision only you can make."
Elizabeth left the hospital with a folder full of treatment options and prognosis statistics, each page another reminder that her empire was built on sand. She sat in her car for twenty minutes, hands gripping the steering wheel, trying to process the magnitude of what she'd just been told.
She was twenty-five years old. She had half a billion pounds in assets. She controlled companies that employed thousands. And in eighteen months, maybe two years if she was lucky, none of it would matter.
The drive to Wynsor HQ felt surreal, as if she were watching herself from outside her own body. The city she'd helped reshape moved past her windows with indifferent efficiency. People went about their lives, completely unaware that Elizabeth Wynsor had just been handed an expiration date.
The boardroom was too bright, too full of the sterile assurance that came with expensive legal counsel and institutional wealth. Elizabeth sat at the head of the table, a stylus twirling in her fingers, surrounded by attorneys and board members who whispered, then hushed, then whispered again.
She'd called the meeting for noon. Mandatory attendance for all senior executives and board members. No exceptions. The gossip had been instantaneous-whispers about hostile takeovers, about strategic pivots, about Elizabeth Wynsor's next calculated move.
None of them suspected the truth.
"Thank you all for coming," Elizabeth began, her voice cutting through the murmur of conversation with familiar authority. "I'll be direct because that's how I've always operated. I've been diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, brain cancer. Grade IV. Terminal."
The silence was absolute. Patricia Chen's hand froze halfway to her water glass. Marcus Webb's expression cycled through shock, calculation, and something that might have been opportunistic satisfaction before settling on careful neutrality.
"The prognosis is eighteen months to two years with aggressive treatment," Elizabeth continued, watching them process this information with the detachment of someone observing a chess game. "During that time, my cognitive and decision-making abilities will deteriorate significantly. Which brings us to why we're here."
She opened her laptop, pulling up documents she'd spent three sleepless nights preparing while the tumour pressed against her skull and whispered reminders of her mortality.
"I'm restructuring company ownership and operational control. Ash will assume the position of non-executive chairman with full dividend rights but no voting authority on operational decisions. Ivy will have a profit-sharing seat on the board with advisory capacity but limited decision-making power."
Ash, sitting to her right, looked pale but composed. At twenty-two, he'd developed their father's steady demeanour, but he lacked the killer instinct that had made Elizabeth untouchable. Ivy, barely nineteen, sat across from him with eyes that held equal parts fear and something Elizabeth recognised as relief-relief that she wouldn't have to become what Elizabeth had become.
"This is madness," Marcus Webb said, his voice cutting through the shocked silence. "You're handing control to children. Ivy's barely out of university, and Ash has spent two years in investor relations playing at being an executive."
Elizabeth's fingers stilled on the keyboard. The room temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, which somehow made it more dangerous.
"Careful, Marcus."
"Someone has to say it," Webb continued, emboldened by either courage or stupidity. "This company employs over three hundred people. We have fiduciary duties to investors, pension funds, institutional clients-"
"Did you forget who you're speaking to?" Elizabeth stood slowly, her chair rolling back on silent wheels. "I built this company from nothing. I turned fifty thousand pounds into half a billion. I made your careers, your mortgages, your children's private school fees possible."
She walked around the table, her heels clicking against polished marble with the precision of a metronome. Each step was calculated, measured, like a predator circling prey.
"I also remember every deal we've closed together. The environmental cleanup contracts where we cut corners and pocketed the difference. The healthcare clinic acquisitions, where you suggested reducing patient care time to boost margins. The Morrison Industries acquisition, where you drafted the legal frameworks that made it possible to terminate two hundred employees without severance."
Webb's face went white. Morrison shifted uncomfortably-he'd been the one to sign off on those frameworks, to find the legal loopholes that made Elizabeth's ruthlessness possible.
"Ash and Ivy are my siblings," Elizabeth continued, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow filled the entire room. "They're also inheriting my life's work. The legitimate parts and the parts that keep us all awake at night. I suggest you adjust your tone accordingly."
The executives exchanged glances but held their tongues. Elizabeth's reputation for remembering everything-every favour, every slight, every buried secret-was legendary.
"You're giving them ceremonial positions," Patricia Chen said carefully, her voice cautious. "Non-executive roles with no real authority."
"I'm giving them protection," Elizabeth replied, and even she could hear the lie in her own words.
Protection? The thought tasted bitter. She was creating gilded cages-positions with impressive titles and generous compensation, but no real power. The truth was uglier than the noble sacrifice she was performing: she didn't trust them to handle what she'd built.
Ash was too soft, too ethical. He'd questioned the Morrison acquisition, had argued for better severance packages, had looked at her with something close to disappointment when she'd overruled him. Ivy was too young, too idealistic. She still believed in doing the right thing even when it cost money.
They would ruin everything with their conscience and their naivety.
The succession plan wasn't about protecting them-it was about protecting her empire from them. Even dying, she couldn't bear to truly let go. The professional management would continue her work, the executives would maintain her systems, and her siblings would smile and nod and sign papers they barely understood while her legacy remained intact.
But watching Ash's shoulders collapse slightly under the weight of responsibility he hadn't asked for, watching Ivy's eyes fill with tears she was too proud to shed, Elizabeth felt something uncomfortable stir in her chest.
Am I protecting them or patronising them?
The question lodged itself in her mind like a splinter, impossible to ignore.
"The day-to-day operations will continue under professional management," Elizabeth said, her voice softening fractionally. "The structure protects both your interests and the company's stability. If either of you wants to sell your stakes, you'll need to offer them to the company first. External sales require board approval."
It was control disguised as freedom. Every clause, every restriction, every board approval requirement was a leash she was placing around their necks while calling it inheritance.
"I..." Ash cleared his throat, his voice rougher than usual. "Thank you. I won't disappoint you."
"I know you won't," Elizabeth replied, and meant it. "Neither of you will. You're better than I am."
The words hung in the air like a confession.
After the executives filed out, Webb shooting one last venomous look over his shoulder, and Elizabeth remained standing at the window, staring out at the city stretched forty-three floors below. London pulsed with life and movement, indifferent to the mortality playing out in this glass tower.
She heard movement behind her. Ash and Ivy hadn't left.
The silence that followed the executives' departure felt different-heavier, more honest. Elizabeth remained at the window, her back to her siblings, unable to turn around and face what she'd just done to them.
"Are we really just going to be figureheads?" Ivy's voice was small, trembling with an emotion Elizabeth couldn't quite identify. "Just... decorative pieces on your chessboard?"