**ELENA’S POV**
I arrive at work the next morning expecting the same rigid coldness that usually fills the floor. The same clipped footsteps from Damian’s office, the same tension in my chest, the same awareness that my every movement is monitored by someone in security.
But when I walk in, something feels different. The air is off. Not tense, exactly. Uneven.
Damian stands behind his desk, staring at a document as if the words are shifting in front of him. His brow is drawn tight. His jaw flexes. His eyes move back and forth across the page, but I can tell he is not absorbing a single thing he is reading.
A pen lies beside the folder. The cap is off, and a line of blue ink streaks across the corner of the page, crooked and messy, nothing like his usual precision. His signature already
