The seven o'clock meeting ran long.
It always did. Roman knew this and had stopped fighting it two years ago. He showed up at six forty-five with coffee and no breakfast, same as every Thursday, and sat at the head of the conference table until the room finally cleared at nine fifteen.
He went straight into a follow-up with Hartwell. Then a legal call. Then a stack of documents that had been waiting since Tuesday. Priya left a coffee on the corner of his desk sometime around ten. He drank half of it cold without noticing.
At eleven-oh-four, the pressure arrived behind his left eye.
It always started there. Not sharp. Just a steady push, like a thumb pressing from the inside, specific enough that he knew exactly what was building. He had thirty minutes, maybe forty, before it went from
