The upper floors of HelixCore’s headquarters were built to intimidate. Glass walls, steel beams, a skyline that seemed to bow beneath the weight of ambition. The elevator whispered open into silence, and Mara Voss strode down a polished corridor that smelled of money and disinfectant. Her heels struck the marble in sharp, deliberate beats, the sound announcing her fury before she even reached the corner office.
Two assistants shrank back as she passed. Neither dared meet her eye. Everyone knew: when Mara moved like this, storms followed.
Richard Cole’s office was a cathedral of arrogance—floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city, a desk the size of a coffin gleaming with cold light, leather chairs that swallowed whoever dared sit in them. The air was stale with smoke and whiskey,
