( Joseph POV)
The headline was waiting for me when I woke.
It sat at the top of my screen, clean and merciless, as if the words themselves had been sharpened overnight.
JENKINS EMPIRE COLLAPSES: ASSETS FROZEN, CEO ARRESTED IN WIDENING FINANCIAL PROBE
I read it once.
Then again.
The details followed in tidy paragraphs—money laundering through hospitality subsidiaries, shell corporations layered so carefully they had evaded detection for years, regulatory agencies acting on "newly surfaced evidence." It was all very precise. Very complete.
Too complete.
I set the phone down and stared at the ceiling, letting the weight of it settle.
Jenkins had always believed himself untouchable. He had cultivated that belief—through favors, through intimidation, through money that flowed where it shouldn't and silence that followed it obediently. He'd survived too long to fall like this by accident.
Someone had wanted him gone.
Not weakened. Not warned.
But erased.
