The silence that followed wasn't just quiet; it was pressurized. It was the kind of silence that exists in the eye of a hurricane, where the air feels too heavy to breathe, waiting for the next gust of wind to tear everything apart.
"You talked to Marcus about vendor management," Scarlett said.
Her voice was flat, stripped of emotion, but there was an edge to it—the sound of a blade being tested against stone. She wasn't accusing him; she was calibrating him.
She was running a diagnostic on his honesty.
"I talk to Marcus about operations, Scarlett," Mike replied, his voice steady as a surgeon's hand. "We've had three substantive conversations in the last month alone regarding how the new division handles supplier relationships."
"It was a genuine operational deep dive, not a fishing exercise... I don't need to fish when I'm already swimming in the data."
