Hazel's POV
The board meeting happened on a Thursday, three weeks after the sentencing, in the same glass-walled room where Julian had spent a decade making decisions that reshaped entire industries without ever once, from what I understood, raising his voice. I wasn't allowed in the room itself, but I waited in the hallway outside with his assistant, who kept glancing at me like she expected me to know something the rest of the company didn't yet. The hallway smelled of fresh coffee from a cart near the elevators, and through the glass wall I could see silhouettes shifting in their seats, papers passed hand to hand, though the sound was muffled enough that I couldn't make out a single word.
He came out an hour later, his expression unreadable in the way it used to be before the gala, be
