Chapter 14

Overnight, the entire Juville was in chaos. No one had seen it coming. Moore Group and Shaw Group, once bound by a close alliance, collapsed together and were driven into bankruptcy. Two empires fell in a single, ordinary night, made remarkable only by its silent devastation. Rain came down in sheets. In a cemetery on the outskirts of Juville, a lone figure moved through the storm. Nelson walked carefully, cradling the small box that was all that remained of Natalie and following the winding path up to the gravesite. He sank to his knees in the cold, driving rain before he placed the box down gently. It wasn't even a proper urn. Inside was only a handful of scorched earth he had brought back from Donfield. He stared at it for a long time, then lifted the soil in his hands and buried it slowly, grain by grain, with painstaking care. On the headstone, Natalie's smile was bright and piercing through the gray curtain of rain. He crouched and brushed the rain from the photo. His fi