Leo was in a meeting when the call came through.
A good meeting. The kind with glass walls and a long table and eight people whose time was expensive enough that having them all in the same room simultaneously represented a significant investment in expectation. He was mid-sentence when his phone screen lit up on the table beside his notepad.
Seb.
He looked at the name for exactly one second. Then he picked up.
"Excuse me," he said to the table, with the smooth confidence of a man who had learned to make interruptions look like they were everyone else's good fortune. "I need to take this."
He was out of the room before anyone had time to form an opinion about it.
"I need twenty billion," Seb said.
No greeting. No preamble. No acknowledgment of the meeting Leo had just walked out of or the time of day, or any of the ordinary scaffolding of professional conversation. Just the number, placed down the line like a demand rather than a request.
