Two weeks later.
The deep, bruising chill of late November had settled permanently over Manhattan. The sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the forty-second floor was a brilliant, freezing blue, utterly devoid of clouds.
The atmosphere inside the Sanctum was entirely different from the manic, adrenaline-fueled chaos of the hostile takeover phase.
It was quiet. Not the tense, breathless quiet of an impending crisis, but the heavy, deliberate silence of an empire operating at maximum efficiency.
Ryan sat behind the massive walnut desk, reviewing a dense, fifty-page legal brief outlining the absorption of the final Global Data Dynamics physical assets into the Rebuild Tech blind trust. The paperwork was flawless. Diana's legal team had structured the acquisition with such brutal precision that the federal regulators couldn't find a single crack in the armor.
He signed his name on the final page with a heavy steel pen, tossing the document into an outgoing tray.
