The Game Begins
Michael made his first move quietly. Of course he did. It didn’t arrive with threats or confrontation or anything that could be traced cleanly back to him. It arrived the way these things always did, through implication, suggestion, and the careful planting of doubt. Alicia noticed it in the margins. A vendor delayed a response that should have been routine. A steering deck included a question that hadn’t existed the day before. A risk appeared on a register already mitigated, flagged as “newly identified” by someone who hadn’t been in the meeting where it was resolved. None of it was overt. None of it was accidental. She sat at her desk late that afternoon, reviewing the artefacts with the same calm focus she applied to everything else. The patterns aligned too neatly to be coinc
- Writer
