Chapter 4 - Exile
The descent was brutal and fast. Elias didn't just lose his company; he lost his reputation. Clara's PR team spun a masterful narrative. They painted Elias as a burnt-out tech bro who had held back Clara's visionary genius. When he tried to sue, Sterling's army of corporate lawyers buried him in endless litigation, freezing his assets.
Within a year, Elias went from a penthouse overlooking the skyline to a cramped, one-bedroom apartment in the South Side. He drank too much cheap whiskey. He stared at the ceiling. He watched the news as ground was broken on "The Apex"—Clara's magnum opus, a hundred-story behemoth in the center of the city.
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The worst part wasn't the loss of money. It was the television broadcast of Clara’s wedding to Richard Sterling. She looked radiant, dripping in diamonds, smiling for the cameras. Elias threw his whiskey glass at the television, the screen shattering into a spiderweb of dead pixels. He had loved her. He had handed her the world, and she had used it to crush him.
That night, Elias hit absolute rock bottom. But in the morning, as the hangover receded, something else took its place. It wasn't sorrow anymore. It was a cold, crystalline fury. If Clara Vance wanted to play god with the skyline, Elias was going to bring the heavens crashing down on her head.
