The office was a cathedral of shadows and silence, the only light a warm, intimate pool from my desk lamp that made the contracts scattered before me look like forgotten stage props. Seven days. A week since the boardroom, since the clash that had left us both standing on opposite sides of a chasm we’d built together. He hadn’t given me the cold shoulder or the silent treatment. No, Ahmir was far too meticulous for that. His method was control. Courteous check-ins. Strategic silence. A presence so deliberate it felt like an embrace and a cage all at once.
He didn’t punish. He didn’t chase. He just waited, with the infinite patience of a predator who already knows the path his prey will take.
The door clicked open without a knock. He never knocked when the moment mattered. Ahmir stepped i
