The whiplash was brutal. One moment, the world was confined to the soft, tangled sanctuary of his sheets; the next, it was the cold, pressurized cabin of a Gulfstream G650, slicing through the stratosphere at just under the speed of sound. The intimacy of the night was gone—not just gone, but professionally compartmentalized, locked away in a steel box to be dealt with later. Or never. In its place was a cold, sharp, unified focus.
We didn't sit opposite each other this time, indulging in silent power plays. We sat side-by-side at the jet’s polished mahogany conference table, a fortress of laptops and open files between us. The air hummed with the quiet fury of the engines and our coiled energy. If the flight to Rotterdam had been preparation for a skirmish, this was the frantic, high-sta
