The office felt strangely hollow once the elevator doors closed behind William and Isabella. The frantic energy of the morning had dissipated, leaving behind a silence that was almost too loud.
I sat at my desk, my fingers resting motionless on the keys.
Nominally, I was drafting the minutes from the Sterling acquisition meeting, but my mind was stuck on the metadata I'd seen earlier. It didn't just seem like Julian had made a mere mistake, it seemed like he had spent time—meticulous, early-morning time—crafting a failure for his own nephew.
I looked at the cooling vanilla latte William had brought me.
It was a small, quiet gesture of normalcy in a building that felt increasingly like a house of mirrors. He was out there now, likely enduring a lunch filled with Isabella's possessive chatter and Julian's veiled "advice," while I was back here, holding down the fort.
The afternoon was characterized by a heavy, sluggish energy.
