Page 2 of The Founder's Power

I almost grimace. He’s not wrong.

Lucas walks to the window and whistles low. “Hell of a view. You always were obsessed with being on top.”

“I got here, didn’t I?”

“You did.” He turns, expression unreadable now. “And yet you look like a man who lost something on the way up.”

I don’t react. I’ve trained myself not to.

Lucas studies me for a beat longer, then claps his hands once. “Well. If you ever get tired of being a lonely king in a very expensive tower, come find me. I hear rumors you’re interested in legacy plays again.”

“Rumors travel fast.”

“I travel faster.”

I shake my head as he heads for the door, but I don’t stop him. There’s no need to. Lucas never says everything he’s thinking, not until he wants to.

He leaves the same way he came in—without fanfare and without apology.

I’m not sure why exactly, but the silence he leaves behind feels different.

Not emptier. More like it’s waiting.

The door clicks shut behind Lucas. I sit back in my chair, stare up at the ceiling, and let my eyes close for a second too long.

It takes me back.

We were twenty-one, broke, and arrogant as hell. Living off black coffee and ambition, dreaming bigger than our bank accounts ever could. The dorm room was barely large enough for two beds and one busted mini fridge. Lucas used to joke we were building empires with stolen Wi-Fi and three hours of sleep.

“You ever think we’ll actually make it?” I asked him once, during one of those two a.m. caffeine-fueled strategy sessions.

He smirked, flicked a paperclip at me. “Damian, we’ll either rule the world… or crash it trying.”

I believed him.

He had charm. I had control. He knew how to make people say yes; I knew how to make them regret saying no. We were unstoppable… until we weren’t. Until I got hungry for more. Faster. Tighter. Cleaner. I started cutting out the noise. The distractions. The people.

Including him.

We didn’t fight. We just drifted. I built walls. He built connections.

Now he strolls in like nothing’s changed.

But I have.

And maybe… maybe that’s the problem.

CHAPTER2

ISABELLE

The gallery is warm with the hum of conversation, the clink of champagne glasses, the subtle shuffle of heels on marble. My name—Isabelle Sinclair—is etched in gold on the placard at the entrance. It still doesn’t feel real.

I stand near the far wall, where the largest of my new pieces stretches wide across the canvas. Color and emotion collide in it—deep reds, fractured whites, streaks of cobalt that bleed like memory.

A man walks by, pauses, and tilts his head at the painting. “It’s about control, isn’t it?” he asks, half to me, half to the art. “Power and restraint.”

I smile softly. “Or letting go of both.”

---