Elina arrived early.
She always did.
The executive floor was quieter in the mornings, the city still half-asleep beneath a pale gray sky. She liked this hour, the illusion of calm before power woke up and demanded obedience.
She settled into a chair at the far end of the long boardroom table, notebook open, pen aligned carefully along the spine. Around her, executives trickled in, murmuring greetings, placing tablets on the polished surface like offerings.
Today's meeting was important. She knew that much.
It was a strategy review, expansion plans, labor restructuring, public response models. The kind of meeting interns were rarely allowed to observe, let alone contribute to.
She hadn't been told why she was invited.
That alone made her uneasy.
The door opened precisely on time.
Alex Romanov entered without ceremony.
The room rose instinctively.
"Sit," he said, already moving toward the head of the table.
Elina lowered herself into her chair, pulse steadying through sheer force of will. She did not look at him. She focused on the screen as slides appeared, one after another.
The meeting began smoothly.
Too smoothly.
Executives spoke carefully, choosing words like chess pieces. Alex listened in silence, occasionally interrupting with questions so precise they sliced through vague answers with surgical ease.
Elina followed along, her mind working quickly. She recognized the projections immediately.
They were hers.
Or rather, adaptations of the notes she had made, cleaned up and elevated into formal slides. The same labor-impact concerns. The same assumptions. The same risks.
Her stomach tightened.
She hadn't expected them to be used so quickly.
A senior executive finished his presentation and gestured to the screen. "This model reflects our updated risk tolerance. It addresses prior concerns raised during internal review."
Alex leaned back in his chair.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then…
"This is weak."
The word landed like a slap.
Silence rippled through the room.
Alex stood, walking slowly toward the screen. His hands clasped behind his back, posture relaxed, voice calm. Controlled.
Dangerous.
"This approach overestimates public resistance and underestimates institutional leverage," he continued. "It's cautious to the point of cowardice."
Elina's chest tightened.
She stared at the screen, heat creeping up her neck.
Alex wasn't looking at her.
He wasn't addressing her.
He didn't even know.
But he was dismantling her work piece by piece.
"In this market," he went on, "fear-based modeling is useless. It assumes emotional backlash where history shows compliance. Whoever prepared this lacks real-world understanding."
A few executives shifted uncomfortably.
Elina's fingers curled slowly into her palm.
"This," Alex said, tapping the screen, "is the kind of thinking that costs companies momentum. And momentum is everything."
The room was silent.
Then he added, casually, "This is what happens when junior analysts are allowed to influence strategic decisions."
Something inside Elina cracked.
She felt every eye in the room flicker, briefly, subtly in her direction.
Not openly.
But enough.
Her throat burned.
Alex returned to his seat, already moving on. "Revise the model. Strip out the excess caution. I want confidence, not fear."
"Yes, sir," the executive said quickly.
The meeting continued, but Elina heard nothing else.
Her pulse roared in her ears. Her face felt hot, exposed, as if she'd been stripped bare in a room full of strangers.
He hadn't said her name.
That made it worse.
This wasn't a confrontation.
It was erasure.
When the meeting adjourned, chairs scraped back softly. People stood, gathering papers, avoiding eye contact. No one spoke to her.
She remained seated, staring at her notebook, vision blurring.
Don't cry, she ordered herself.
Not here.
She stood slowly, legs unsteady, and turned to leave.
"Ms. Hart."
Her spine stiffened.
Alex's voice, calm, detached, stopped her just short of the door.
She turned.
"Yes?"
He studied her briefly, expression unreadable. "You were quiet today."
Her lips parted in disbelief.
"I was listening," she said carefully.
"As you should," he replied. "Observation is more valuable than speaking before one understands the stakes."
Her jaw tightened.
"With respect," she said quietly, "the model you criticized…."
"I know exactly what I criticized," Alex interrupted. "And it wasn't personal."
The words struck deeper than he intended.
She nodded once. "Of course."
He hesitated, something flickering across his face, uncertainty, perhaps, or irritation at her tone.
"If you have ambitions here," he continued, "you'll need thicker skin."
Something cold settled in her chest.
"Noted," she said.
She turned and left before he could say anything else.
The hallway felt longer than usual.
Elina walked quickly, heels echoing against the floor, each step a battle against the tears threatening to spill. She reached the elevator just as the doors slid open and stepped inside, alone.
The moment the doors closed, her composure shattered.
Her hands shook.
She pressed her palm to her mouth, breathing shallowly, eyes stinging.
She had expected hostility from Alex Romanov.
She had not expected this.
This had been worse than yelling. Worse than dismissal.
This had been public dismissal without acknowledgment.
She rode the elevator down in silence, staring at her reflection, eyes bright with unshed tears, jaw clenched in defiance.
When she stepped outside, the city greeted her with cold air and indifference.
She welcomed it.
That evening, Elina stayed late.
Long after most interns had gone home, she sat at her desk, reworking the model Alex had torn apart. Not to appease him but to prove something to herself.
She adjusted assumptions. Re-ran projections. Tightened variables.
By the time she finished, her eyes ached and her shoulders burned.
She saved the file.
Confidence, he had said.
Fine.
She would give him confidence.
Just not the kind he expected.
High above the city, Alex Romanov stood by the windows of his office, phone pressed to his ear.
"Yes," he said. "I want revised projections by morning."
He ended the call and frowned.
Something about the meeting nagged at him.
Not the strategy that had been sound.
It was her.
Elina Hart.
The way she had gone still when he criticized the model. The look in her eyes when he told her it wasn't personal.
He hadn't meant to humiliate anyone.
He never did.
But power had a way of crushing things without noticing.
He turned back to his desk, opening the file again.
He paused.
Scrolled.
Read more carefully this time.
His jaw tightened.
The logic was solid. Conservative, yes but not ignorant. Not weak.
His criticism echoed in his mind.
Junior analysts.
Slowly, realization settled.
The model had been hers.
Alex leaned back in his chair, exhaling sharply.
For the first time that day, unease crept beneath his control.
He hadn't intended to target her.
But intention didn't erase impact.
And Elina Hart, he suspected, was not the kind of woman who would forget being made small.
Nor forgive it easily.
Elina reached home well past midnight.
Liam was asleep at the table, head resting on his arms. She gently woke him and sent him to bed, then checked on her mother, adjusting the blanket carefully.
When she finally lay down, exhaustion wrapped around her like a heavy coat.
But sleep didn't come.
Alex's words replayed in her mind.
Cowardice. Junior. Fear.
She stared into the darkness, resolve hardening slowly, painfully.
If Romanov Industries was a battlefield
Then she would learn how to fight.
And Alex Romanov, whether he knew it yet or not, had just declared war.