KISAREL.
I walked into that meeting room behind Mr. Stark and his senior staff and immediately understood why Carol had looked at me the way she did this morning.
The room changed the moment he walked in.
Nineteen senior staff and eight junior staff, all of them already seated, mid-conversation or mid-page or mid-breath, and every single one of them went still the moment Ocean Stark crossed that threshold. Conversations died, phones disappeared, everyone's backs straightened, and their eyes found the table in front of them or the wall ahead or anywhere that wasn't directly in his line of sight.
Mr. Stark took his seat at the head of the table.
He didn't open with pleasantries. He didn't do a welcome or an acknowledgment of who was in the room. He simply sat, looked at the table in fro
