My face wasn’t my own tonight. It cost thirty thousand dollars, three hours in a makeup chair, and a lifetime of learning how to keep my pulse steady while lying to a room full of people.
I am a professional shadow. I’ve ended three-year relationships over coffee so my clients didn’t have to see the tears. I’ve sat through board meetings for CEOs who wanted a spa day. But tonight was different. Tonight, I was Julian Vane—the black sheep heir to a shipping empire, returning to the family estate after a decade of "reclusive travel."
The real Julian was currently passed out in a high-end detox clinic in Zurich. I was the one wearing his silk tuxedo and his trademark smirk.
The Performance
The gala was a sea of champagne and shark-like smiles. I glided through the ballroom, mimicking Julian’s slight limp and his habit of touching his cufflink when he felt cornered. I was a ghost in a $5,000 suit, performing for an audience that hadn't seen the "lead actor" since he was twenty.
"Julian, darling, you look... revitalized," a woman in emerald silk hissed, her eyes searching mine for a flicker of the old addict.
"Solitude is the best medicine, Aunt Clara," I replied, my voice a perfect, gravelly pitch-match for the recordings I’d studied.
It was going perfectly. I was a master of the borrowed life. I felt the thrill of it—that strange, hollow power of being someone else—until the clock struck midnight.
The Crack in the Mask
I was standing on the darkened balcony, nursing a scotch I didn’t intend to drink, when I felt a presence behind me. I didn't turn. Julian wouldn't.
"You’re late," a voice whispered.
It was a man’s voice, low and trembling. I felt a hand press something hard and cold into my palm—a small, brass key. I kept my gaze fixed on the moonlit gardens, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"The lawyer changed the dosage," the voice continued, barely audible over the distant orchestra. "They aren't waiting for the inheritance anymore, Julian. They’re moving the date up to tonight. If you stay for the final toast, you won't wake up tomorrow. Get to the safe house in the boathouse. Now."
Before I could breathe, the footsteps retreated.
The Realization
I looked down at the key. My hand, the hand of a man paid to be a mirror, was shaking.
This wasn't just a boring gala. Julian Vane hadn't hired me because he was "tired of social obligations." He had hired me to be his canary in the coal mine. He knew a hit was coming, and he’d paid me to take the bullet—or the poison—in his place.
Suddenly, the lights in the ballroom dimmed. A spotlight hit the grand staircase.
"And now," my "father," the patriarch Arthur Vane, boomed into a microphone, "let us bring my son, Julian, to the stage for a toast to his return."
The room turned toward me. Three hundred people. Somewhere among them, a killer was watching, waiting for me to take a sip of the vintage vintage crystal.
I wasn't Julian Vane. I was a nobody from a studio apartment with a talent for mimicry. But if I dropped the act now, I’d be a dead nobody. If I kept playing the part, I was walking toward a velvet-lined coffin.
I adjusted my cufflink. I forced the smirk back onto my borrowed face. I had to decide in the next ten steps: do I run for the boathouse, or do I play the most dangerous scene of my life?
I stepped off the balcony and back into the warmth of the ballroom. The air felt heavier now, thick with the scent of expensive lilies and the metallic tang of my own fear.
Every eye followed me. I scanned the faces—Aunt Clara, the business rivals, the stone-faced security detail. Who was the "lawyer" the voice had mentioned? And which one of these smiling vipers had authorized a murder?
The Final Act
I climbed the marble stairs, my "Julian limp" feeling more authentic than ever as my knees threatened to buckle. Arthur Vane stood at the top, holding two crystal flutes. He looked at me with a warmth that didn't reach his eyes—a predatory, clinical gaze.
"To my son," Arthur announced, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "A man who has finally learned the value of family."
He handed me the glass.
The liquid was a pale, shimmering gold. In the peripheral of my vision, I saw a man in a sharp grey suit—the family attorney, Silas Thorne—leaning against a pillar. He wasn't looking at Arthur. He was staring directly at my glass, his thumb rhythmically stroking his jaw.
The Pivot
I felt the weight of the brass key in my pocket. If I drank, I was a corpse. If I smashed the glass, I was a fraud exposed to a family of killers.
I needed a third option. I needed to use the only thing I truly owned: my ability to manipulate a room.
I reached out, but instead of taking the glass by the stem, I "accidentally" brushed Arthur’s hand. I let my fingers tremble just enough. I let the "Julian" persona slip—not into myself, but into the version of Julian they expected: the unstable, jittery wreck.
"I can't, Father," I whispered, loud enough for the front row to hear. I let a wild, paranoid light enter my eyes.
"Julian?" Arthur’s smile flickered.
"He told me," I hissed, pointing a shaking finger toward the back of the room, toward Silas Thorne. "He told me what you did to the vintage. He said you were 'changing the dosage.'"
The room went deathly silent. The orchestra trailed off into a discordant screech of violins.
The Chaos
Silas Thorne’s face turned the color of ash. "I—Julian, you’re confused—"
"He gave me the key!" I shouted, pulling the brass key from my pocket and holding it up like a holy relic. "The key to the boathouse! He told me to run before the toast!"
It was a gamble. I was pitting the conspirators against each other. If Silas was the one who had whispered to me on the balcony, I was burning his cover. If he wasn't, I was framing him for a betrayal Arthur wouldn't ignore.
Arthur turned his gaze to Silas, his expression shifting from faux-paternal love to cold, calculating rage. "Silas? What is he talking about?"
"He's delusional, Arthur! The drugs—"
"Check the glass!" I yelled, backing away toward the edge of the stairs. "If I’m crazy, Silas, why are you sweating?"
In the confusion, as the family guards moved toward a panicked Silas Thorne, I did what I do best. I became a ghost. I slipped behind a heavy velvet curtain, darted through a service door, and sprinted for the servant’s stairs.
I didn't go to the boathouse. That was a trap for the real Julian. Instead, I headed for the garage where the catering vans were packing up.
Ten minutes later, I was in the back of a laundry truck, peeling off the silicone prosthetics from my face. My thirty-thousand-dollar face ended up in a bin of dirty napkins.
My phone buzzed. A private number.
“Performance was... unexpected,” the text read. “But you’re alive. The check has been cleared. Stay dead.”
I looked at my reflection in a small hand mirror. For the first time in years, I didn't recognize the man looking back. I was no longer Julian Vane, and I wasn't quite myself yet either. I was just a man in the dark, wondering if the "real" Julian had been the one who sent that text.
The text didn't come from the detox center in Zurich. I knew that because the real Julian Vane didn't have the steady hands to type "performance."
I spent three weeks lying low in a motel in Nevada, Iowa—a place so unremarkable it felt like a witness protection program. I grew a beard, stopped wearing tailored suits, and tried to remember how to be a person who didn't have a script.
But in my line of work, you don't retire. You just wait for the next mask to find you.
The New Assignment
The email came through an encrypted channel I only used for "High-Risk/High-Reward" clients. No names, just a set of coordinates and a PDF of a face I was supposed to study.
I opened the file. My heart stopped.
The man in the photo wasn't a stranger. He was the man who had whispered to me on the balcony—the one who gave me the brass key. He was a mid-level fixer named Elias Vance.
The Brief: * Role: Elias Vance.
Duration: 48 hours.
Objective: Attend a private deposition in Des Moines and sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding the Vane estate.
The Twist: The person hiring me to play Elias... was Julian Vane.
The real Julian was finally out of detox, and he was cleaning up his loose ends. He wanted me to play the man who had tried to "save" me so he could lure the real Elias out of hiding—or perhaps, to see if I’d be stupid enough to step back into the line of fire.
The Deposition
I walked into the glass-walled conference room in downtown Des Moines looking exactly like Elias Vance. The beard was gone, replaced by a sharp goatee and a pair of rimless spectacles.
The room was freezing. Across the table sat Silas Thorne—the lawyer I had humiliated at the gala. He looked ten years older, his career in tatters, but his eyes were sharp with a desperate, hungry vengeance.
"Mr. Vance," Silas said, sliding a thick stack of papers toward me. "I was surprised you agreed to meet. After the... unpleasantness at the estate, I thought you’d disappeared."
"I'm a hard man to lose, Silas," I said, using Elias's low, gravelly rasp.
I picked up the pen. This was supposed to be a simple signature. I’d sign, Julian would pay me another fifty thousand, and I’d disappear for good.
But as I leaned forward, I noticed something written in the margins of the signature page. It wasn't legal jargon. It was a series of numbers—a bank account balance.
$0.00
Underneath it, in tiny, cramped handwriting: He’s not paying you. He’s liquidating you.
The Mirror Shatters
I looked up. Silas wasn't looking at the papers. He was looking at the door behind me.
"You know," Silas whispered, leaning in so the microphones wouldn't catch it. "The problem with being a professional stand-in is that eventually, you run out of people to hide behind. Julian isn't in Zurich anymore. He’s in the lobby. And he’s brought a 'cleaner' to make sure the fake Elias and the real Silas both disappear today."
My phone buzzed in my pocket. One new message.
“I’m watching the CCTV. You’re tilting your head too far to the left. Elias never did that. Fix it before you die.”
I wasn't just playing a role anymore. I was caught in a crossfire between a vengeful lawyer, a psychopathic heir, and a man I had thought was dead.
I didn't flinch. I didn't look at the door. I didn't even look at the phone vibrating against my leg. Instead, I straightened my posture, adjusted my rimless glasses, and let a cold, predatory smile spread across my face—the kind of smile a man only wears when he’s the one holding the leash.
"Silas," I said, my voice dropping an octave, losing the gravelly rasp of Elias and adopting the smooth, bored arrogance of Julian Vane himself. "You always were a better lawyer than a conspirator."
Silas froze. His eyes darted from my face to my hands. "What are you doing?"
The Counter-Play
I leaned back and tapped the microphone on the table, clicking it off with a deliberate snap. "The man in the lobby? He isn't here for me. He’s here because I told him you were planning to sell the Vane ledgers to the feds."
I pulled my phone out—not to read the text, but to display a pre-loaded image of a high-level wire transfer. I slid it across the table. It showed a massive payment to a security firm—the very one Julian’s "cleaner" worked for.
"I’m not Elias," I whispered, leaning in until I could see the sweat beads on Silas’s upper lip. "And I’m not the 'stand-in' you think I am. Who do you think taught the actor how to play Julian so well? I’ve been playing the part of my own subordinate for years. It’s the only way to see who’s truly loyal."
I was lying through my teeth, weaving a narrative that I was the real Julian, masquerading as a fixer to test my enemies. It was a meta-performance—a lie inside a lie.
The Turn
The heavy oak doors at the back of the room swung open. A man in a charcoal overcoat stepped in. His hand was deep in his pocket, his gaze scanning the room with clinical precision. The "cleaner."
I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes locked on Silas, who was now trembling.
"He’s late, isn't he?" I said loudly, directed at the man in the doorway. "Take Mr. Thorne to the secondary location. He has some... accounting errors to explain."
The cleaner hesitated. He had been sent to kill a "stand-in" and a "lawyer." But here was a man sitting at the head of the table, commanding the room with the absolute authority of the Vane bloodline, treating the hitman like a common chauffeur.
In the world of professional deception, the person who acts like they belong usually wins.
"Sir?" the cleaner asked, his voice uncertain.
"Did I stutter?" I snapped, finally turning my head just enough to give him a look of icy disdain. "And tell the man waiting in the lobby—the one who thinks he’s Julian Vane—that if he sets foot on this floor, I’ll have his trust fund dissolved before he hits the elevator button. I'm done with the games."
The Escape
The cleaner moved. But he didn't move toward me. He moved toward Silas.
Panic exploded in the room. Silas began to scream about "imposters" and "actors," but the cleaner’s heavy hand clamped over his mouth, dragging him toward the service exit. They thought they were following the orders of the master.
I waited until the door clicked shut. My lungs burned as I finally let out the breath I’d been holding.
I grabbed the non-disclosure agreement, tucked the brass key into my palm, and walked out the front doors. I didn't take the elevator. I took the stairs, stripped off the goatee in the stairwell, and walked out of the building as a generic businessman in a generic suit.
I was three blocks away when my phone buzzed again.
“That was... inspired,” the message read. “You didn't just play the role. You stole the script. But now the real Julian has no choice but to come out of the shadows to prove he exists. See you at the waterfront.”
The sender wasn't Julian. It wasn't Elias.
I realized then: the only person who could be watching the CCTV and texting me with that much intimate knowledge... was the woman in the emerald silk. Aunt Clara.
The Des Moines waterfront was a desolate stretch of concrete and salt-stained wood, haunted by the skeletal frames of dormant cranes. The wind off the Raccoon River bit through my thin suit jacket, but the cold was a grounding force. It reminded me that I was still in my own skin—at least for now.
I saw the black sedan parked near the edge of a crumbling pier. A single figure stood by the railing, the moonlight catching the shimmer of emerald silk beneath a heavy wool coat.
The Architect of the Game
I didn't sneak up. In this world, stealth is an admission of guilt. I walked with the measured, heavy tread of a man who owned the night.
Aunt Clara turned as I approached. She wasn't the flighty, champagne-soaked socialite from the gala. Her face was a map of cold ambition, her eyes two chips of flint.
"You have a gift," she said, her voice cutting through the wind. "Most of my family's 'assets' are blunt instruments. You... you're a Stradivarius."
"I'm a man who’s tired of being used as a target, Clara," I replied, dropping the accents and the personas. I spoke in my own voice—neutral, tired, and dangerous. "Why the texts? Why save me in the boardroom just to lure me here?"
"I didn't save you," she corrected, a small, cruel smile touching her lips. "I gave you a stage. I wanted to see if you were worth the investment. The real Julian is a genetic dead end—a pill-addicted shadow of his father. The empire needs a face. A stable, brilliant, obedient face."
The Ultimate Contract
She stepped closer, the scent of expensive lilies—the same scent from the gala—filling the air. She held out a leather-bound folder.
"Julian is gone," she whispered. "The 'cleaner' you redirected? He works for me, not him. By tomorrow morning, the real Julian Vane will have 'relapsed' one final time in a hotel room downtown. There will be a closed-casket funeral."
My blood ran cold. "And then?"
"And then, Julian Vane returns from his grief-induced seclusion. He’s changed. He’s sharper. He’s ready to lead the company." She tapped my chest with a manicured finger. "You don't just play him for a night. You become him. Forever. A billion-dollar life, a seat at the head of the table, and total immunity... as long as you take your cues from me."
The Choice
This was the "Borrowed Life" taken to its terrifying conclusion. No more studio apartments. No more cheap motels. I would have everything I ever mimicked, but I would lose the one thing I had left: the ability to stop acting.
"And if I refuse?" I asked.
Clara looked out at the dark water. "Then you're just a man who knows too many secrets, standing on a very lonely pier. And I hate untidy endings."
I looked at the folder, then at the black river. I felt the brass key in my pocket—the one that started this whole mess.
I didn't look at the folder. I didn't even look at her. I reached into my pocket, but I didn't pull out the brass key. I pulled out my phone. The screen was dark, but the small red dot of a recording app was pulsing like a heartbeat.
"You're right about one thing, Clara," I said, my voice as steady as a surgeon's. "I am a Stradivarius. And a master of my craft always knows when the audience is trying to trap him in the theater."
The Cold Pivot
Her smile didn't just fade; it evaporated. "You think a digital file is going to stop me? I own the police in this district. I own the servers that file would travel on."
"I’m not sending it to the police," I said, finally looking her in the eye. "I’m a professional shadow, remember? I have a list of 'clients'—people who have hired me to break up with their mistresses, people who have hired me to stand in for them at scandals. Those clients happen to be your board members. Your rivals. The people who would love to know that the Vane empire is being run by a woman who replaces her kin with actors."
I took a step toward the edge of the pier, holding the phone over the churning black water.
"The recording is currently live-streaming to a private cloud," I lied—the most important lie of my career. "If my heart rate drops, or if this phone hits the water, the link goes public. You don't want a puppet, Clara. You want a ghost. And that’s exactly what I’m going to be."
The Negotiation
The silence between us was heavy, filled only by the groaning of the pier’s timbers. For thirty seconds, I was a dead man. Then, Clara let out a sharp, jagged laugh.
"Fine," she hissed, her voice dripping with venom. "Go back to your gutters. Go back to being nobody. But know this: Julian's death will still happen. The vacuum will remain. And if I ever see a face that looks even remotely like his in my city again, I won't use a cleaner. I'll do it myself."
"Check the account you used to pay 'Elias,'" I said, backing away toward the shadows of the cranes. "I took a 'severance package' for my silence. It’s enough to ensure you never see me again."
The Final Mask
I didn't run. I walked. I walked until the black sedan was a speck in the distance, until the scent of lilies was replaced by the smell of diesel and rain.
I found the boathouse that the brass key belonged to. Inside wasn't a safe house, but a small, unassuming skiff with an outboard motor and a waterproof bag. Inside the bag was a passport—not Julian's, not Elias's, and not mine.
It was a blank slate.
I pushed the boat into the river, the engine humming a low tune of freedom. As the sun began to bleed over the horizon, I looked at my reflection in the water. The makeup was gone. The prosthetics were gone.
For the first time in my life, I wasn't playing a part. I was the lead actor in a story that hadn't been written yet.
Six months later, the humidity of Bangkok hung over me like a wet wool blanket. I sat at a corner table in a noodle shop, the kind of place where the steam from the pots acts as a natural veil.
I was no longer the man who lived in the shadows of the Vane family. My hair was bleached by the Thai sun, and I’d picked up a slight limp—not Julian’s calculated one, but a real one from a motorcycle spill in Phuket. I went by "Kit." It was a short, sharp name. Hard to trace.
I was sipping a cold Singha when a man sat down across from me. He didn't order food. He just placed a crumpled piece of paper on the table.
The Echo
I didn't look at him. I looked at the paper. It was a clipping from an American business journal, dated two weeks ago.
"JULIAN VANE EMERGES FROM SECLUSION: SHIPPING HEIR SELLS REMAINING ASSETS TO ANONYMOUS BUYER."
Beneath the headline was a photo. It was "Julian"—or rather, someone playing him. The prosthetics were good, the suit was perfect, but the way he held his chin was all wrong. It was too aggressive. Clara had found a new actor, but he was a hack.
"He's making mistakes," the man across from me whispered. He spoke with a familiar, gravelly rasp.
I froze. I looked up. It was Elias Vance—the real one. The man I had portrayed in the Des Moines boardroom. He looked tired, his face scarred, but he was very much alive.
"Clara didn't kill the real Julian," Elias said, leaning in. "She couldn't find him. He’s been running his own game from the start. And the person she has sitting in that office right now? He’s not just a bad actor. He’s a decoy for a much larger play that’s going to sink the global market."
The Hook
I pushed the beer away. "I’m out, Elias. I burned the script. I’m a ghost."
"The problem with being a ghost," Elias replied, sliding a second photo across the table, "is that eventually, someone moves into your old house."
The photo was of me. Not me as Julian, or me as Elias, but me as I looked right now—sitting in this very noodle shop, taken from a distance.
"Julian is looking for you," Elias said. "Not to kill you. He wants to hire you for the final act. He says the man who managed to outmaneuver Aunt Clara is the only one capable of stealing the Vane empire back from the inside."
The New Stage
Elias stood up, leaving a small, high-tech earpiece on the table.
"The flight to Zurich leaves in four hours. You can stay 'Kit' and wait for Clara’s cleaners to eventually find this shop, or you can come back and play the most dangerous role ever conceived: The man who replaces the man who replaced him."
I looked at the earpiece. My heart, which had been quiet for six months, began that familiar, rhythmic thrum. The addiction was back. The thrill of the borrowed life was calling.
I didn’t pick up the earpiece immediately. I waited until Elias had vanished into the humid thrum of the Bangkok night, then I reached out and let the small piece of plastic settle into my palm. It felt like a cold, heavy coin.
The flight to Zurich was a blurred sequence of engine hums and sterile air. I spent the fourteen hours deconstructing the photo of the "New Julian" in the journal. I looked for the tells: the stiff shoulders, the way he gripped his pen. He was an amateur—likely a disgraced theater actor or a desperate stuntman. Clara was getting sloppy.
The Reunion in the Alps
The "meeting" wasn't in a boardroom. It was in a secluded chalet overlooking the Lake of Zurich, accessible only by a private funicular.
When I stepped inside, the air smelled of woodsmoke and expensive tobacco. A man was sitting by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the snow. He turned around, and for a second, it was like looking into a distorted mirror.
The real Julian Vane was gaunt. His eyes were hollowed out by years of chemical abuse and the sheer weight of a name he hated. He didn't look like a king; he looked like a survivor.
"You look better than I do," Julian said, his voice a thin, melodic rasp. "Small wonder Clara liked you. You’re the version of me my father actually wanted."
"I'm the version of you that knows how to survive your family," I replied, standing by the fire. "Elias says you want to steal it back. All of it."
The Heist of a Lifetime
Julian stood up, leaning heavily on a cane. "Clara is moving to liquidate the entire shipping fleet into a shell company based in the Caymans. Once the money moves, the Vane name is dead, and the assets vanish into her private accounts. The 'New Julian' she hired is scheduled to sign the transfer papers at the annual Shareholders’ Summit in three days."
He slid a digital tablet across the table. It showed the blueprints of the Vane Corporate Tower in London.
"The Summit is a fortress," Julian continued. "Biometric scanners, voice recognition, and a security team that knows every face in the room. You can't just walk in as me. You have to walk in as The Cleaner."
I raised an eyebrow. "The man Clara uses to fix her problems?"
"Exactly," Julian smirked. "You’re going to play the man she sent to kill you. You’ll 'capture' me—the real Julian—and bring me to the Summit as a trophy. While Clara is distracted by the sight of her greatest threat finally under her thumb, you’ll use the Cleaner’s high-level access to swap the liquidation papers for a total transfer of power... to me."
The Final Performance
It was a masterstroke of irony. I would be playing a killer, escorting my original target, into a room full of people who thought they were watching a tragedy, when they were actually watching a coup.
"There's one catch," Julian added, his eyes turning dark. "The Cleaner? He’s not a man of many words. He’s a man of action. If anyone asks for proof of your loyalty, you’re going to have to do something that makes them believe you’ve truly turned."
He handed me a silenced pistol. It was empty, but the weight of it was a promise.
"Clara will expect you to execute me in front of her to prove the New Julian is the only one left. You'll have to fake my death in a room full of the most observant vultures on the planet."
The London Fog
Three days later, I stood in the elevator of the Vane Tower. I wore the charcoal overcoat, the heavy boots, and the cold, empty expression of the man who had dragged Silas Thorne into the night six months ago.
Julian stood beside me, his hands bound in zip-ties. He looked terrified. It wasn't an act; he knew that if I missed a single beat, he wouldn't be "fake" dead. He’d be gone for real.
The elevator chimed. The doors opened to a boardroom of glass and steel. Aunt Clara stood at the head of the table, the "New Julian" hovering nervously at her shoulder.
"Well," Clara said, her voice a purr of triumph. "Look what the cat dragged in. I told you I didn't like untidy endings."
She looked at me—at the mask I had perfected. "Do it, and the transfer is complete. End the Vane legacy so we can begin the Clara one."
I stepped forward, the pistol in my hand.
In the three seconds it took to raise the pistol, I realized the truth: the Vane bloodline was a virus. Julian was a broken shell who would likely relapse within a month of taking power, and Clara was a tyrant who would spend the rest of her life hunting me down to ensure I never spoke.
The only way to win a game this rigged was to flip the board entirely.
The Execution
I stepped toward Julian. I saw the flick of his eyes—the signal we’d practiced. He was ready to fall. Instead, I grabbed him by the collar and shoved him toward the "New Julian," the terrified actor Clara had hired.
"Wait—" Julian gasped, the script suddenly rewritten in his mind.
I didn't give him time to think. I fired a shot—not at a person, but at the massive, floor-to-ceiling glass window behind them. The reinforced pane shattered into a million diamond-like shards, the London wind howling into the boardroom like a banshee.
The Hostile Takeover
The room descended into chaos. Shareholders screamed and dove for cover. Clara’s security froze, confused by the "Cleaner" suddenly breaking protocol.
I didn't point the gun at Clara. I pointed it at the digital tablet sitting on the table—the one currently connected to the Vane global server.
"Clara," I shouted over the wind. "You wanted a successor. You wanted someone with the spine to lead this company into the next century. Look at these two." I gestured to the trembling, gaunt Julian and the weeping actor beside him. "The bloodline is dead. But the brand is still worth billions."
I pulled a small flash drive from my sleeve—the one Elias had given me in Bangkok, which I had spent the flight "re-coding."
"This drive doesn't transfer power to Julian," I told the room, my voice booming with the authority of a man who had played a hundred CEOs. "It triggers a pre-arranged merger with an anonymous holding group. A group I represent. If you want your dividends to survive the night, you'll vote 'Yes' on the emergency motion."
The New Identity
Clara stepped forward, her face a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. "Who do you think you are? You're a mimic! A parasite! You have no name!"
I smiled. It was the first honest smile I’d worn in years.
"I'm the man who’s been playing all of you for six months," I said. "And as of this moment, I’m the majority shareholder of Vane International."
I tossed the pistol onto the table. It was empty anyway. I looked at the board members—the "vultures" who only cared about the bottom line. They didn't care who I was, as long as the stock price didn't drop. And I had just offered them a way to cut out the toxic Vane family drama forever.
One by one, they looked at the chaos, then at me—the only person in the room who wasn't shaking.
The Final Bow
Ten minutes later, the Vanes were being escorted out by their own security. Julian was headed for a high-end "retirement" facility (one he would never leave), and Clara was being "retired" to a litigation-heavy exile.
I stood alone in the wreckage of the boardroom, the London fog rolling in through the broken window. My phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number—likely Elias.
“A bold choice. The world thinks you’re a ghost who took over an empire. What happens when they ask for a name?”
I looked at the glass shards on the floor. I didn't need a name. I had the ultimate mask now: Success.
I sat in the high-backed leather chair at the head of the table. I adjusted my cuffs. I looked at my reflection in the dark screen of the tablet.
"The role of a lifetime," I whispered to the empty room.
THE END.