The simple kind, the kind that can be measured and modeled and adjusted in a spreadsheet until it makes sense. I know these people and others like them, and I know these numbers.
I know how these conversations go. I know how to keep my voice even and my expression sharp and professional while steering everyone exactly where I need them to go.
What I do not know how to do is conduct a polished financial strategy call while an enormous man in a dark suit silently inspects every inch of my office like he is preparing it for a coming siege.
“And if the licensing review slips into next quarter,” Harold says, “what does that do to your revised forecast?”
I keep my eyes on the screen.
“It pushes the timing, not the viability,” I say smoothly. “The demand assumptions remain the same. We would simplyshift the rollout window and recalibrate marketing spend accordingly.”
As I’m speaking, Adrian opens the cabinet beneath the built-in shelves along the far wall.
Not loudly. Not rudely. Just efficiently, like he has every right in the world to open my cabinets while I am trying to work.
I hate how little sound he makes.
That is part of the problem.
If he were clumsy about it, if he banged drawers or interrupted or inserted himself into the room in some obvious, bumbling way, I could be angry. I could dismiss him. I could decide he was an obstacle and be done with it.
Instead, he moves with that same unnerving economy he has had all morning. Quiet. precise. Impossible to ignore even while he is technically staying out of the way.
He checks the cabinet, closes it, lifts his gaze to the window behind my desk, the one on the other side of the room that looks out onto the casino floor, then to the door with frosted glass that leads into the hall.
Every entrance. Every sight line. Every vulnerable point.
Every one of them apparently his business now.
On the screen, Marissa says, “Would you still maintain the same staffing assumptions on the finance side if the timing shifts?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because the internal infrastructure doesn’t change. We’d front-load some of the preparation and delay some of the public-facing costs, but the staffing model itself holds.”
I click to the next slide in the deck and do not look at Adrian.
I absolutely do not look at Adrian.
That would be giving this too much importance, and I refuse to do that in my own office.
This office.
Mine.
It sits in the administrative wing at The Regent Club and has been mine since opening. I designed every inch of it and bought every piece of furniture in here, carefully and precisely, to project the image I wanted.
The walls are pale cream, the shelves dark walnut, the desk broad enough to spread out reports and still have room for my laptop, docking station, two monitors, and the stack of annotated folders to my right.
The window behind me gives a view of the water. The window in front of me gives me a view of the casino floor. The monitors on yet another wall give me a view of everything else. The artis restrained. The furniture is comfortable without being soft. It looks like a serious person works here.
Because a serious person does.
And yet, all morning, Adrian has moved through my house, through the garage, through my car situation, through the ride into the city, and now through my office, reducing every space I’ve built for myself into a list of vulnerabilities.
Not wrongly, which is the most infuriating part.
Just clinically.
He is by the bookshelf now.
