Third Person POV
The office carried its usual rhythm that morning, the kind of steady hum that Belle had grown accustomed to over the years. Phones rang, keys clattered against keyboards, muted conversations floated through glass partitions, and printers whirred out endless pages. But beneath the outward calm, Belle's nerves remained taut, still stretched thin by the weight of the lawsuit and the unsettling revelations about Noah.
She had resolved to push her worries aside and throw herself into work. If she couldn't untangle everything at once, at least she could control the hours in front of her. Yet as she settled into her chair and glanced across the shared floor of Vale's headquarters, she caught herself noticing things she normally might not have paid attention to.
