“Lauren doesn’t matter,” he says then, and the line is so offensively familiar I almost admire its timeless stupidity.
I just look at him.
He hears himself too late.
“I mean,” he says, scrambling, “this wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
I think of the baby.
The apartment.
The hidden transfers.
The seat at the will reading.
No, I think. It was supposed to happen much more smoothly.
“It happened exactly like you built it to happen,” I say.
And then, because some truths deserve witness, I add, “You just never imagined someone else was building too.”
He leaves after that.
Not in rage. Not in tears. Simply emptied of lines.
For the first time in years, he cannot dominate the scene. The script is gone. The audience has changed. And whatever role remains for him now, it is not protagonist.
The weeks that follow are brutal and clarifying in equal measure.
The board meeting where my succession becomes formal feels like walking into a theater where everyone already knows the reviews. Some directors greet me warmly. Some with cautious professionalism. One older man, famous for confusing confidence with volume, begins explaining capital structures to me within six minutes.
I let him finish.