The conference room gleamed with too much glass and too little patience.

Four hours.

Four whole hours of presentations, counter-arguments, economic projections, and billionaire egos collided like boulders rolling down the same hill. 

Booker Blackwell sat upright at the long table, shoulders squared, expression unreadable, the perfect mask of a man who had spent half his life steering empires.

But beneath the stillness, exhaustion pricked behind his eyes.

They were close. Painfully close ...