The monthly department meeting always felt like a test of patience. The conference room was too warm, the overhead lights too bright, and the air thick with the hum of artificial professionalism barely holding together a room full of men who’d been competing with each other for years. Micheal leaned back in his chair, the faint creak of leather under his broad shoulders drowned out by the low chatter around him. One long leg stretched under the table, his posture deliberate, calm, commanding without effort. His ice-blue gaze flicked toward the door briefly, scanning the hallway through the glass wall of the conference room before settling back on the folder in front of him. To his right, Daniel Cross — predictably loud, predictably crude — was whispering to Harvey Klein, his voice pitched low enough to avoid the attention of management but not low enough to escape Micheal’s notice. “Bet she’s gonna be a piece of work,” Daniel muttered with a chuckle, leaning closer to Harvey. “New hire’s supposed to be some bombshell. Fresh outta college. You know what they’re like… all wide-eyed, tight little—” Micheal’s hand stilled mid-page turn. He didn’t lift his head, didn’t move more than the subtle shift of his jaw tightening, but something in the air around him changed. The low murmur of his coworkers faded against the sudden weight of silence in his immediate space. “—probably thinks she’s too good for us, though,” Harvey replied, smirking. “Give it a month. Bet she’ll be crawling to whoever’s nicest to her. I’ll give her a reason to—” Micheal turned his head, finally, slowly, with the kind of precision that made the act feel heavier than shouting. Ice-blue eyes locked on Harvey first. He didn’t blink. He didn’t speak. He just looked at him. Harvey’s smirk faltered immediately. Daniel, oblivious, kept going. “Man, imagine if she ends up working under Micheal. She wouldn’t last a week without—” “Daniel.” Micheal’s voice cut through the low hum of the room like a blade — quiet, even, but sharp enough to still the men around him. Daniel froze mid-sentence, finally noticing the weight of Micheal’s gaze on him. Micheal’s expression didn’t shift. No raised brows, no anger, no overt emotion at all — just cold, level silence wrapped in two syllables. “You finished?” Daniel swallowed. “Y-Yeah. Just talkin’, man.” Micheal tilted his head slightly, leaning back further in his chair, his knuckles brushing the closed file in front of him. His voice was calm, almost casual, but there was nothing relaxed about it. “Then find something else to talk about.” Daniel glanced at Harvey, who was suddenly fascinated by the grain of the wooden table. Micheal shifted his gaze back to his papers without another word, dismissing them entirely. His silence said the rest — and in some ways, it was worse than yelling. A moment later, Jonas Meyer leaned forward from across the table, whispering under his breath with the kind of dry amusement only Micheal tolerated: “Remind me never to sit next to you during one of these again.” Micheal didn’t look up from his notes. “Then stop choosing the wrong side of the table.” Jonas smirked quietly. The tension on the other side of Micheal didn’t ease. The meeting hadn’t even started yet, but everyone in Micheal’s immediate orbit knew exactly where his boundaries were drawn — and that crossing them wasn’t just unwise. It was suicidal.