The stapler missed Alina's head by an inch.
It sailed past her ear, struck the glass partition behind her with a sound like a gunshot, and dropped into a recycling bin. Every head on Floor 30 snapped up.
"*THEO,*" Marcy Kim roared from the far end of the room. "If you send one more press release with a typo in the CEO's name, I will staple your hands to your desk."
Theo, at the next workstation, had gone the color of printer paper. "It was *one* letter—"
"It was *his name.*"
Alina bent, fished the stapler out of the bin, and set it gently on Theo's desk.
"Yours, I think."
Theo didn't say thank you. He looked at the stapler, and then at her, and then at the bank of screens above them, where her own face from the press conference was looping on mute: Alina laughing, Alina rolling her
