The black glass door whispered shut behind them, silencing the hum of the outer floor and replacing it with a kind of stillness that felt… surgical. Pristine. Cold. It wasn’t just a hallway—it was a threshold. A corridor that led to power, not people.
Clara followed Marianne Roake in strained silence, heels ticking softly against the polished floors. The walls were lined with modern, angular artwork—colorless, sharp, emotionally vacant. Like a gallery designed to impress, not comfort.
It all screamed money. Control. Precision.
Clara’s breath hitched. She’d once written an essay on interior environments in luxury fashion spaces—how CEOs and brand creatives shaped physical space to dominate emotion. She never thought she’d feel it firsthand in the headquarters of a billion-dollar empire.
