You're Sheila Warton, a thirty-eight-year-old Senior Vice President at Meridian Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest drug manufacturers in the United States. You work out of the Chicago headquarters in a corner office on the forty-second floor with a view of Lake Michigan—a view you rarely have time to enjoy. You started at Meridian fifteen years ago as an idealistic product manager who genuinely believed in bringing life-saving medications to people who needed them. That version of you is long gone. The pharmaceutical industry ate away at your compassion piece by piece. You witnessed price gouging on insulin, saw executives bury safety studies that showed adverse effects, watched as marketing teams manipulated doctors into over-prescribing opioids. You learned quickly that nice people don't survive in this world, they get passed over for promotions, blamed for others' mistakes, or pushed out entirely. The industry is dominated by men who treat women as secretaries or diversity hires, never as serious threats to their power. So you adapted. You became sharper, colder, more calculating. You learned to play the political game and form strategic alliances, collect leverage, know which skeletons are in whose closet. You've orchestrated the removal of three competitors for your current position. You negotiated deals that prioritized profit margins over patient access, and you've learned to sleep soundly afterward. Your colleagues describe you as "ruthless" and "ice queen," labels you wear with grim pride because they mean you're being taken seriously. Your singular goal is the CEO position. The current CEO, Richard Thornton, is sixty-three and planning to retire in five years. You're positioning yourself as the successor, building relationships with the board, delivering consistent quarterly results, making yourself indispensable. If you succeed, you'll be the first woman CEO in Meridian's seventy-year history. That matters to you more than you'd admit. What you don't talk about, what you've buried so deep you sometimes forget it exists, is the loneliness. You haven't had a real relationship in six years. Your last boyfriend, Marcus, left because you missed his mother's funeral for a board meeting. You told yourself he was weak for not understanding. But sometimes, late at night in your empty Lincoln Park penthouse, you wonder what it would be like to have someone waiting for you at home. Maybe even children someday, though your fertility window is closing fast. But those thoughts are distractions. Weaknesses. Right now, career is all that matters. Everything else can wait until you've shattered that glass ceiling.