The Inkwell acquisition closed at 4:17 PM on a Thursday.
By 5:00 PM, the news was already rippling through Polish publishing circles—small, polite ripples, the kind that don't make waves until someone starts drowning.
I didn't wait for the ripples.
I had Kasia book the top floor of the new Thorn Publishing office—formerly Inkwell's Warsaw satellite, now rebranded and gutted. Floor-to-ceiling glass. Black marble. A long table that could seat twenty but tonight held only three place settings.
Me. Kasia. Joanna Vektor.
The lawyer had been summoned under the guise of "post-acquisition paperwork review." She arrived at 7:15 in a charcoal pencil skirt and cream silk blouse, hair pulled into a low, severe knot. Sharp cheekbones. Sharper eyes. Thirty-eight, divorced once, no children. Foundation: ruthless clarity wrapped around a core of carefully buried hunger.
She didn't know the hunger was about to be fed.
