Liana’s POV

The first sign of trouble came as a whisper in a boardroom. Within seventy-two hours, it became clear that Z-Core was the target of a hostile takeover.

The numbers didn’t lie, a foreign conglomerate, Kovalenko Group, had begun quietly buying up shares, using proxies and subsidiaries to disguise the pattern. By the time the legal team pieced it together, twenty-one percent of Z-Core was already under threat.

The board panicked. Investors called hourly. News outlets caught the ...