Chapter 73: Eric’s Rage.

After the call ended in icy silence, Samuel White lowered the tablet onto his polished mahogany desk. For several long moments, he sat unmoving, his aged face a mask of barely concealed anguish and rage. His son's dismissive words reverberated through his mind like a sickening refrain. "We don't see you as the head of the family...not anymore." His chest felt hollow, as though a gaping void had opened up and begun devouring him from the inside out. The White family—his crowning legacy, the empire he'd devoted his entire life to building from nothing—had thoroughly forsaken him, casting him aside like so much worthless refuse. How could it have come to this? Where had he gone so wrong in his patriarchal stewardship to inspire such brazen mutiny from his flesh and blood? Samuel's calloused hands clenched into weathered fists atop the desk's gleaming surface. No, he would not simply accept this intolerable insult and slight. Not from the entitled, ungrateful wretches who owed