The next move didn’t come through numbers.
It didn’t appear in projections or strategy decks.
It came through something quieter.
Something harder to measure.
Perception.
The office felt normal the next morning.
Too normal.
The kind of normal that had been carefully reconstructed overnight—polished surfaces, steady voices, familiar routines.
But underneath, the air had shifted.
I felt it before I saw it.
In the fractional pauses when eyes lingered a second too long.
In the way conversations adjusted, mid-sentence, when I entered a room.
In the subtle tightening of space around me.
Not overt.
Not confrontational.
Just… aware.
“He moved,” I said quietly as I closed the door to Shawn’s office.
Shawn didn’t look up from the document in front of him, but his shoulders registered
