CASSIAN
The boardroom was a tomb of high-gloss mahogany and the smell of stale espresso and expensive ambition. It was the kind of space that cost more to rent by the hour than the median annual income of the city below, and everyone inside was acutely, smugly aware of it.
I sat at the head of the table, technically present. My eyes moved at the prescribed intervals, tracking the speakers. I nodded when a nod was the required currency for moving the conversation forward. To any observer, I was the image of the engaged principal stakeholder, the Wolfe scion doing the heavy lifting of "prestige" and "synergy."
In reality, I was an hour deep into a performance I had perfected by the age of twelve.
The men across from me were discussing the importance of being seen with the right names, status architecture, they called it.
