Alexander Wolf stood at the head of the sleek conference table, the Manhattan skyline glinting coldly behind him like a silent jury. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, his tie loosened just enough to suggest impatience rather than weakness. On the screen behind him glowed a spreadsheet that might as well have been an obituary.
"This," he said, tapping the glowing cells with a silver pen, "is the third time in two months we've hired someone who couldn't make it past probation."
The words fell into the room like iron weights. Silence spread across the table like a spill—uneasy, slow, and hard to clean.
He let the silence stretch. He had learned long ago that silence unnerved people far more than shouting ever could.
Finally, he turned his gaze to the recruitment team seated near the far end. His voice was calm, clipped—every syllable honed to cut.
"Tell me," he drawled, "do you all enjoy wasting my time?"
"Sir," Claire began, her voice careful as if she were picking her way across shattered glass. "We did a thorough review. The last candidate had stellar credentials—"
"So did the Hindenburg," Alex snapped, without raising his voice.
Claire swallowed. Her hands were folded so tightly on the table her knuckles had gone white, but she didn't dare uncurl them.
From the other end of the table, someone exhaled too loudly and immediately regretted it.
Alex began to pace, shoes soundless on the polished floor. The glass walls reflected him in fragments—a man in motion, jaw tight, a storm looking for a place to land. Every wasted hour—every rescheduled meeting, every threadbare excuse—felt like a personal insult. He'd built Wolf Industries from a half-rented office and a twenty-page pitch deck into something that mattered. All he asked in return was simple: competence.
"I don't care about stellar credentials," he said, his voice lowering until it nearly vanished. "I care about someone who can think before I have to. Someone who won't fall apart the first time they're asked to stay past six."
The recruiting manager shifted in his seat, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. The movement only seemed to tighten Alex's jaw further.
"You know what frustrates me most?" Alex asked, pausing at the head of the table. "It's not that we make mistakes. It's that we keep making the same mistakes, dressed up in slightly different suits."
Claire took a breath, her lips parting. "We've reached out to several agencies—"
"Agencies don't know this company," Alex cut in. "They know buzzwords. I don't need buzzwords. I need someone who understands what it means to be indispensable."
Another silence. This one deeper, edged with fear.
Alex glanced to his right, toward Grant Li—COO, longest-serving partner, and perhaps the only person who could still speak without measuring every word. Grant was leaning back slightly, an eyebrow raised, watching the scene with a faint, dry amusement that only he could get away with.
"Grant?" Alex prompted, a faint flicker of challenge in his voice.
Grant shifted, folding his arms. "Look, Alex—if you don't get someone soon, you'll end up answering your own calls." His mouth curved in the smallest of smiles. "And I promise you, none of us wants to see that."
A faint, nervous laugh fluttered around the table. Alex didn't join. His gaze remained as flat and cold as the skyline behind him.
"Go back," he ordered, turning his attention to the recruiters. "Reopen the files. Look at the candidates you disMs. ed too quickly. Call the second-choice. The third-choice. I don't care what it takes—just find me someone who can do the job."
Claire hesitated, voice barely a whisper. "And if we don't?"
Alex's eyes narrowed, the faintest muscle ticking at his jaw. "Then replace yourselves with people who can."
No one dared to breathe.
Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and walked out. The glass door closed softly behind him, but the echo of his words seemed to linger in the air, sharp as glass splinters.
Outside, the corridor felt too bright. He could see his reflection caught and warped in every polished surface: sharp suit, sharper stare, and a tension coiled so tightly it might snap.
He walked back to his office—glass walls, black marble desk, the city sprawled far below like a living chessboard. The view usually calmed him. Today it only reminded him how many pieces were in play, and how many could still go wrong.
His phone buzzed on the desk. Another mis-scheduled call—wrong time zone, wrong client, wrong everything.
For a long second, Alex simply stood there, jaw clenched so hard it hurt. He picked up the phone, set it back down carefully—then shoved it across the desk, hard enough that it skidded and spun, coming to rest inches from the edge.
"How hard," he muttered under his breath, voice hoarse with exasperation, "is it to find one competent human being?"
Beyond the glass, the city pulsed on—unmoved, unbothered.
Across town, Sophie Carter checked tomorrow's calendar alert on her phone.
Wolf Industries. 10:00 a.m.
They didn't know it yet. But she was about to walk straight into Alexander Wolf's carefully ordered world—
and nothing in it would ever be quite the same.