The silence of Roman's private office was different from the silence of the boardroom. In the boardroom, silence was a weapon, a tool of intimidation wielded with precision. Here, it was a shroud, heavy with the weight of decisions made and consequences yet to unfold.
Roman didn't look up when the door opened. He didn't need to. The stride was too casual, the rhythm too familiar to belong to an employee or a rival. Only one person moved through Sterling Technologies with that particular blend of confidence and disregard for protocol.
"I told Elena I wasn't taking visitors," Roman said, his pen moving steadily across a merger filing, the scratch of ink on paper the only sound in the room.
"Good thing I'm not a visitor," Daniel Harper replied, closing the door behind him with a click that sounded far too loud for the room's heavy atmosphere. "Visitors have appointments and respect boundaries. I'm just an old friend dropping by unannounced."
