Chief Minister: The Palisade Journals - Volume II
CHIEF MINISTER
Power Corrupts. Truth Demands a Reckoning.
For eight years, Shori Ashford has been the most powerful person on the continent. Today, her past comes to collect what she owes.
As Chief Minister of the Continental Authority, Shori has built a legacy of stability and progress-at least, that's what the public sees. Behind closed doors, she's authorized programs that would horrify her citizens, made compromises that have cost countless lives, and sacrificed everything personal for the greater good.
She tells herself the children in the enhancement facilities are necessary casualties. That the systematic abductions serve a higher purpose. That the people she's broken were already beyond saving.
Then Minister Nessa Kaine walks into the Council Chamber with photographs that could destroy everything.
Nessa was once Shori's closest ally-someone who believed they could change the world through institutional reform. But that was before Shori learned that idealism was a luxury leaders couldn't afford. Before she discovered that sometimes the greater good demands unforgivable choices.
Now Nessa sits across from her as Minister of Internal Affairs, armed with evidence of systematic human experimentation and the moral clarity Shori abandoned years ago. The investigation she's demanding will expose not just institutional crimes, but the calculated betrayals that made them possible.
Some reckonings are eighteen years in the making.
"I became what I had to become to protect what mattered most. Do you think I wanted this?"
As the carefully constructed equilibrium of eight years begins to crumble, Shori faces the ultimate choice: fight to preserve the power she's built on calculated cruelty, or confront the woman she's become and the people she's destroyed in service to her vision of the greater good.
When you've forgotten the difference between protection and control, can anything survive the reckoning?
Volume 2 of The Palisade Journals
A devastating political thriller about institutional corruption, moral compromise, and the price of choosing power over principle.
Chief Minister explores what happens when good intentions pave the road to unforgivable evil-and whether redemption is possible when the bill finally comes due.
Volume 2 of The Palisade Journals
A devastating political thriller about institutional corruption, moral compromise, and the price of choosing power over principle.
Chief Minister explores what happens when good intentions pave the road to unforgivable evil-and whether redemption is possible when the bill finally comes due.
Content Advisory: Contains themes of systematic institutional abuse, moral corruption, and the psychological cost of political power. Intended for mature readers.
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