The morning sun rose over the city's skyline, casting long, sharp shadows against the glass towers of the financial district. But for the first time in thirty years, the light didn't shine on a stable Carter empire. By 8:00 AM, the digital world had already exploded. The "Everglow Scandal" was trending on every social media platform, and the stock market was reacting with a violent, red-line drop in Carter Corp's shares.
Inside the building, the atmosphere was chaotic. Arthur stood in the center of his vast office, his hands tucked into his pockets, watching with a strange sense of detachment as federal agents moved through the hallways he once ruled. They were seizing black-box files, hard drives, and the very logs that Alicia had risked her life to find at the docks.
"It's done," Arthur said, turning as he heard a soft footstep.
Alicia was standing by the door. She looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, but there was a peace in her expression that hadn't been there since the day they met. The weight of ten years of unanswered questions had finally been lifted.
"Are you okay, Arthur?" she asked, walking toward him. "You're watching your life's work be dismantled in front of your eyes."
Arthur looked at his name engraved on the heavy glass desk, then back at her. "This wasn't my life's work, Alicia. This was my father's monument to his own ego, built on a foundation of silence. My real work... the things that actually matter... we haven't even started building those yet."
The sound of the private elevator dinging interrupted the moment. A group of high-priced lawyers burst in, their faces masks of panic, followed by Henry Carter. The patriarch looked aged; his face was a ghostly pale and his hands were trembling, but his eyes still held that predatory, desperate sharpness.
"You've destroyed us, Arthur!" Henry roared, ignoring the federal agents. "You've handed our legacy, our bloodline, to the government on a silver platter! And for what? For a girl whose parents were nothing but a footnote in history?"
Arthur didn't flinch. He walked up to his father, the height difference between them now feeling like a mountain of moral clarity.
"My parents were the foundation of my world, Henry," Alicia's voice cut through the room, cold and steady. She stepped up beside Arthur, her gaze unwavering. "And you didn't just kill them. You tried to kill the man your own son could have been by forcing him to live in your shadow."
"I am still the Chairman of this board!" Henry screamed, turning his rage toward the agents. "You have no right to touch these files!"
"Actually, Henry," a lead agent said, stepping forward and unfolding a warrant. "Based on the testimony provided by your son and the digital evidence recovered from your private server... you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, witness intimidation, and corporate fraud."
The room went silent. The metallic click of the handcuffs echoed through the glass office like a gunshot. As they led Henry away, he looked back at Arthur one last time. It wasn't a look of rage anymore, but a terrifying realization: he had lost his son to the truth long before he lost his company to the law.