The silence stretched between them like a wire pulled taut, vibrating with the unspoken. Scarlett shifted, her eyes dark with a new kind of calculation.
She wasn't just bleeding from the betrayal at home anymore; she was bleeding from the operational failures threatening her empire.
"The logistics situation," she said, her voice dropping into a register of cold, professional urgency. "It's not just a vendor problem, Mike."
"It's a stranglehold."
"Tell me the scope," he said.
He didn't offer comfort. He offered focus.
He knew that for a woman like Scarlett, focus was the only real anesthetic.
She laid it out with lethal precision. The transportation firm's recent inspection hadn't just been a routine check; it had been a surgical strike.
Three specific operational categories had been restricted. Two of those categories were the carotid arteries of their current delivery phase.
