Scarlett didn't look away. Her gaze was no longer a probe designed to find weakness; it had become a laser, calibrated to measure potential.
She was assessing him not as a problem to be solved, but as an asset to be leveraged or a force to be reckoned with. The air between them felt thick and pressurized, as if the very molecules were reacting to the shift in their dynamic.
"I'm going to be direct, Mike," she said, her voice dropping into a register that was stripped of all pleasantries. "No more dancing around the edges."
"Please," he replied.
He didn't lean back. He didn't flinch.
He met her bluntness with a calm that was almost unnerving.
"I want to understand what it would look like if someone occupied your position, someone who holds all those keys simultaneously and was thinking about it strategically." She leaned in closer, her shadow falling across the table. "Not just reacting to opportunities as they present themselves."
