The echo of his words clung to her like a shadow she couldn’t shake.
Report directly to me.
Clara forced her eyes onto the seating chart glowing on her screen, but the office felt… different. Not louder or quieter—just tuned to some frequency she couldn’t quite hear, but could feel prickling in the air.
Half an hour later, Veronica materialized, perfectly framed against the glass partition, as if she belonged to a different, colder world altogether.
“I hear you’re expanding your responsibilities,” she said, her gaze scanning the mess on Clara’s desk. “Ambitious of you.”
Clara kept her voice polite, steady. “It wasn’t exactly voluntary. Marianne—”
“Marianne doesn’t hand off projects like this without approval from above,” Veronica interrupted smoothly, tilting her head. “And now you r
