The world outside Malia's office seemed distant, muffled by the walls and the weight of everything that had been piling up in her life. There was a time when the sound of a phone call or the soft hum of the city outside her window had felt like the normal rhythm of life. But now, everything was static, everything was noise, and nothing seemed to make sense anymore. Selene had taken her business to the edge, and now, it felt like she was driving Malia to the same breaking point she had once been so desperate to avoid.
Malia sat at her desk, staring at the spreadsheet in front of her. Figures blurred together, lines of red and black merging until they seemed like nothing more than meaningless strokes on a page. But deep down, Malia knew that these numbers represented the unraveling of everything she had worked for. Every decision, every long hour spent building her empire, seemed to have been reduced to this: a series of attacks that threatened to destroy everything.
