Damien's POV
Monday was the first normal Monday in a long time.
Not absence of problems. Just absence of emergencies. The distinction mattered more than it used to.
I was at my desk by seven. The BCT quarterly review needed finalising. Three emails from board members required responses that were direct without being pointed. A development team in the tech wing had hit a problem they needed me to look at personally.
Normal things. The kind that made a company run rather than the kind that threatened to end it.
I worked through them steadily.
At eight Sophia appeared with coffee and her laptop and settled into the chair across from me which had become her chair in the specific way that things became yours when you used them consistently and nobody objected.
We worked in the same quiet
