“I asked for a winning contract, not this trash,” I snapped, my voice echoing across the boardroom. “The bid is in a few weeks, and this—” I gestured toward the glowing screen “—is the best you all could come up with? Maybe I should start firing people.”
Silence followed, thick and heavy. The bid and tender team, along with the architecture unit, sat frozen around the table. Their faces were pale under the fluorescent light, eyes darting between me and the presentation on the screen.
They’d been walking me through PowerPoint slides for the past three hours — colorful graphs, estimated budgets, recycled concepts. Nothing sharp. Nothing worth presenting. I could feel the tension building in my chest, the dull throb of impatience behind my temples.
I knew I was putting pressure on them. I
