The silence after confrontation always carries a strange kind of weight, as though the air itself is recalibrating around what has just been said.
By the time the boardroom doors close behind us, the corridor feels too bright, too polished, too indifferent to what just occurred inside. Assistants move briskly past, phones ring, and markets continue breathing.
Empires do not pause for personal wars.
Ethan walks beside me, steady but quiet. I can feel the shift in him—not doubt, not fear, but something more complicated. Adolf's threat did not land as a corporate maneuver. It landed as something ancestral.
Inside his private office, the door shuts with a muted click. For a moment, neither of us speaks. The skyline stretches beyond the glass like a silent audience.
"You knew he would pivot," Ethan says finally.
I remove my blazer slowly, placing it over the back of a chair before answering. "I knew he wouldn't concede."
"That's not the same thing."
