You push the door.
Inside, the room is dark except for the city and the pulsing red spill from the hall.
Alejandra is not alone.
Mauricio Saldaña stands near her desk, one hand gripping her wrist, the other holding her phone. Javier is by the side credenza, breathing hard, his face pale enough to look waxy in the red light. For one absurd second the tableau feels almost theatrical, like the set of a cheap thriller staged in expensive furniture. Then Alejandra turns her head toward you, and you see the fury in her eyes and know theater ended the instant Mauricio touched her.
“Ah,” Mauricio says softly. “There’s our ghost.”
You do not answer.
Men like him love language because they think whoever names the scene controls it. So you keep walking in until the door swings shut behind you and the office becomes a sealed box with four heartbeats in it.
Javier speaks first, voice shaky. “This is not what it looks like.”
“No?” you say.
“No,” Mauricio answers for him. “It’s exactly what it looks like if you’re not sentimental.”
He is older up close than the board portraits suggest. Handsome in the way wealth ages men selectively. Silver at the temples. Perfect knot in the tie even now. He does not look panicked. That is the problem. He looks like a man who still believes this conversation can end inside the boundaries of his preferred script.
“You should have stayed in the server room,” he says.
“And you should have hired better liars.”
That irritates Javier. He shifts, sweat visible at his collar. “Diego, listen—”
“No,” Alejandra snaps. “You listen.”
Her voice cuts through the room like glass.
Mauricio tightens his grip reflexively. Not enough to hurt her badly, but enough that your hand closes harder around the steel tool before you consciously decide anything. You had thought your feelings toward Alejandra were an inconvenient subroutine. A private malfunction. Something to be quarantined until your contract ended and you went back to consulting for people easier to despise from a distance.
Watching another man grip her wrist corrects that misunderstanding instantly.
Interesting.
You file it away for later because later is a luxury.
Mauricio notices the shift in your posture and smiles faintly. “Don’t be foolish.”
“You first.”
He lifts Alejandra’s phone. “This company does not survive tomorrow’s board meeting under her leadership. We both know that. She’s overleveraged, overexposed, and too proud to let the adults steady the wheel.”
Alejandra laughs once, cold and beautiful. “There it is. He finally says ‘the adults.’”
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