Not the board office. The old janitorial supply hallway on sublevel two, because that is where she expected to find me emotionally even after everything. She’d been turned away upstairs by reception and came down furious in cream heels not designed for industrial flooring. I happened to be in the corridor because I still visited the facilities team twice a week to talk operations, not because I needed to prove anything, but because I refused to become the kind of executive who forgot how buildings actually breathe.

She stared at me in a suit by the supply lockers and looked disoriented, as if she had wandered into a trick mirror.

“We need to talk,” she said.

I waited.

That unsettled her more than open hostility would have.

“You’ve made your point,” she said. “This has gone far enough.”

“What has?”

“All of it.” Her hand fluttered vaguely, meaning consequences, gravity, reality, anything that had stopped obeying her preferred shape. “Your father’s retirement. Jace’s business troubles. The house…”

I looked at her sharply. “What about the house?”

She hesitated, which was answer enough.

They were behind.

Badly.