Chapter 1

The hospital corridor was quiet and smelled of disinfectant. I stood outside Sarah' s room, my hand hovering over the doorknob. The doctor had said it was a minor concussion from the car accident, that she should be fine. But she claimed she couldn't remember me, her husband of five years.

Through the crack in the door, I heard her voice, not weak or confused, but clear and low.

"It' s just for seven days. Then I'll say my memory came back. He can't blame a 'sick' person, right?"

A man's voice, Mark Davis's voice, answered her. He was a junior developer at our company, Innovate Solutions.

"Aren't you worried he'll just cut you off? Financially, I mean."

Sarah laughed, a sound that made the back of my neck cold.

"David? He loves me too much. He'd never do that. He'll feel guilty and give me anything I want. This is the only way to get him to step down so you can take over the Alpha Corp project. Once you're in charge, everything will be ours."

I felt nothing. Not anger, not sadness. Just a profound, hollow emptiness. The woman inside that room was a stranger.

The Alpha Corp project. She had no idea. The client only recognized me as the lead. The contract had a seven-day hard deadline with a one-hundred-million-dollar penalty for failure. A project she was handing to an incompetent fool.

I didn't push the door open. I didn't confront them. I turned around and walked away, my footsteps silent on the polished floor. The plan was set. Her plan. But now, it was mine, too.

The next day, I walked into the Innovate Solutions conference room. Sarah was sitting at the head of the table, a place that used to be mine. She had a small, clean bandage on her forehead, a prop for her performance. Mark sat beside her, looking smug.

The senior staff looked uncomfortable, shifting in their seats. They had been told about Sarah' s "amnesia." They looked at me with pity.

"David," Sarah said, her voice filled with fake confusion. "The doctors... they said I can't be under stress. And I... I don't remember your role here. For the good of the company, Mark will be taking over as acting CTO."

She pushed a document across the table. It was a temporary leave of absence form, effectively stripping me of all my duties.

Everyone stared at me, waiting for the explosion. They expected me to fight, to argue, to point out that I co-founded this company with her, that I built its technical foundation from nothing.

I looked at Sarah, at her carefully practiced look of vulnerability. I looked at Mark, who was already puffing out his chest like he owned the place.

Then I picked up the pen.

I signed the papers without a word. I slid them back across the table.

"Okay," I said, my voice even.

The room was silent. Sarah' s eyes widened slightly. This wasn' t the reaction she had planned for. She expected a fight, followed by my reluctant, guilt-ridden submission. She didn't expect quiet acceptance.

She didn' t know about the seven-day time bomb she had just armed. She thought she was taking over a company.

In reality, she had just signed its death warrant. And her own.