Present day
Third person's POV
'This is a disaster.'
The thought hammered against his skull with every lap. Örn paced, the plush carpet doing nothing to muffle the panic clawing at his throat. That looming, condescending threat from Laurus Daníelson was a noose around the neck of his career, and it was tightening with every tick of the clock.
His eyes landed on the file. His name was there, of course. Buried. And at the top, in bold;
Laurus Daníelson- Director
Director. While Ásta, the asset he'd carefully attached himself to, had become a liability. The sheer injustice of it burned. He had done everything right. He had positioned himself perfectly. And still, the universe was conspiring to erase him.
"That useless bitch!!" The snarl ripped through him, ugly and raw in the quiet room. He snatched the file from his desk and hurled it. Papers exploded against the wall, a shower of white that was almost beautiful in its violence. Almost satisfying. "She's going to ruin me!"
A knock at his door. Sharp. Official.
The sound acted like a switch. Rage vanished. Posture snapped straight. He smoothed his hair, once, twice his hands now perfectly steady as they adjusted his tie. A polished, charismatic smile fixed itself into place. The show could continue.
"Come in. "
The woman who entered was all sharp edges and a neutral expression. She swept the room with eyes that assessed rather than admired, cataloging rather than appreciating. They paused for a split second on the scattered papers in the corner. His smile tightened, but he masked the flare of irritation with a step forward, hand extended.
She didn't take it. Just a nod. Crisp, professional.
"Mr. Geir."
"Please, call me Örn." His voice dropped to a warm, inviting baritone, the one that usually made people lean in, made them want to please him. He reached for her hand anyway, lifting it not for a shake but to press a gentle kiss to her knuckles. A move that typically flustered, that established charm and dominance in a simple gesture.
"How may I help you? "
She retrieved her hand. Gently, but firmly. Her face remained a mask of professional detachment, no flutter, no blush, not even a flicker of annoyance. Nothing.
"Mr. Daníelson requested to see you." His body went rigid. The smile became a brittle mask, porcelain over panic.
Of course he had. That bastard wasn't bluffing. A week in his new ostentatious office and the leash was already being yanked. The summons was an insult.
"I see. " He waved a dismissive hand, a sad, transparent attempt at superiority.
"I'm sure it can wait. How about you join me for tea first? We can discuss the... formalities." It wasn't a question. It was a test. A power play. To see if he could delay the summons, assert his own importance, make her complicit in his defiance.
"I'd rather not risk my job." Her tone left no room for negotiation. No apology or explanation.
"If you'll excuse me. "
She turned and left. The door clicked shut with an air of finality.
The moment she was gone, his face collapsed into a venomous scowl. The gentleman evaporated. What remained was petty, seething, and very, very small.
"Stuck-up, cunt" He muttered it to the empty room, but the words felt hollow, echoes in space that had already forgotten him. "She thinks she's better than me."
He straightened his blazer, a suit of armor for a battle he was already losing. Took a deep breath. Not to calm his nerves. To inflate his ego. To puff up the public persona he would need to survive the lion's den.
He didn't notice that his hand, reaching for the door, was trembling.
Laurus' POV
Patience was not a virtue. It was a currency meant to be spent by those competent enough to earn interest.
Here, in this temple of inadequacy, I was being bankrupted.
The clock ticked like a taunt. The sunlight falling across my desk was an interrogation. The very air felt thin, insufficient, like everything else in this building.
'Why did I lower myself to this? To text her?'
Her silence was not merely an absence of response. It was a statement. Another testament to the pervasive incompetence that seemed to breed in the walls like mold.
The intercom buzzed. A clean, electronic sound.
"Sir." My assistant's voice was clipped. Efficient. Exactly why I'd chosen her: crisp edges, the lack of ornamentation.
"Mr. Geir is here."
I let a moment of silence pass. A small punishment for the man's very existence.
"Send him in."
The door opened, carrying with it the cloying scent of bergamot and naked desperation.
"You wanted to see me, Mr Daníelson?"
Örn stood there, his smile poorly fitted to his face, a borrowed lid that didn't quite shut. Every part of him was a performance. The posture. The tilt of his head. The careful placement of hands.
I said nothing. Let the silence stretch.
Watched.
His smile flickered. A flare at the corner of his mouth. The unconscious lean forward of a man seeking purchase on shifting ground.
'Interesting. Even a hollow vessel, when struck, produces sound.'
"Your office is a true reflection of your stature," he tried again, gesturing vaguely at the window. "Not even the high ranking executives have such a view."
'He's not complimenting me. He's measuring me. Cataloging my assets. Calculating how much of this he can claim for himself.'
"How are you finding your stay at Hauker?" A bead of sweat traced his temple, a single, traitorous drop. "Perhaps we could discuss the project over tea? I cultivated a rather impeccable palate. "
"Stop. Rambling. "
The words landed flat. Final. His grin twitched, a puppet with a fraying string.
He cracked. Sat down without being invited, leaning forward as if we were confidants sharing secrets over brandy.
"Look, Laurus. May I call you Laurus? We're both men of the world. We can see the situation for what it is." A sigh, theatrical, rehearsed. "Ásta... She's a lost cause. Trying to 'fix' her is a novelist's fantasy. Frankly, upon recent reflection, I'm questioning if her early work was even that groundbreaking. A flash in the pan amplified by good timing."
I remained still.
'This is more pathetic than I anticipated. He's not even a competent liar, just a competent mimic of what he thinks liars sound like.'
"We are pragmatic men." He mistook my silence for agreement. Leaned closer.
"We could simply terminate her contract. Cut our losses. The industry is full of hungry, stable talent. Why waste our resources on a sinking ship?"
I leaned back. Steepled my fingers. Watched the hope bloom in his eyes, the desperate, pathetic hope that he'd finally found an ally.
"Is that the extent of your strategic insight?" My voice was soft. Curious.
"To discard the one element with a spark of genius because you lack the vision to fan it into a flame?"
His face lit up. He thought he was being understood.
'Fool'
"It's not about vision. It's about the bottom line! She's a liability now.. broken goods..."
"I have never," I interrupted, my voice dropping to something quieter, "encountered a mind so thoroughly..."
I paused. Let him lean forward. Let him want the completion of the sentemce. Watched the confusion flicker across his face, the slight parting of lips, the unconscious tilt toward me, the desperate hunger for approval even as i was eviscerating him.
"...derivative."
The word landed. I watched it hit. The micro-flare of his nostrils. The twitch at the corner of his mouth. The almost imperceptible slump of shoulders as his body understood before his mind did.
'Predictable.'
He shot to the edge of his seat, composure fracturing along preexisting fault lines.
"I tried! Ive spent the entire week trying to reason with her!"
"You performed one act of petulant theater and call it a week's work. Now you want a medal for your performance?" I leaned forward slightly, just enough to make him lean back. "You are not just a failure, Örn. You are an unoriginal one. And that," I let the silence hang, "is the true crime."
I rose from my chair.
Slowly. Deliberately. Letting the movement carry the weight of every word i hadn't yet spoken. I simply stood, looking down at where he sat and let the geometry of the room rearrange around my verticality.
Finally, I delivered the rest.
"You are a hollow vessel, echoing the most mundane thoughts of others and believing the sound is your own."
I didn't wait for another lie. I reached into my drawer and pulled out the production cast documents. Stefán had prepared them days ago. The new roster was clean, efficient, and conspicuously missing one name. I slid it across the desk. The single stark line terminating his involvement was circled in red. The ink practically glowed.
"Read."
I walked to the window. Turned my back on him as he processed it.
Below, the city moved in orderly chaos, cars slotting into lanes, pedestrians obeying lights with the mindless compliance of cattle. A bird landed on the sill, cocked its head at me, and flew away.
I watched it go, envying, for no reason I could name, its complete indifference to everything in this room.
Behind me, his breathing became ragged. The air grew thicker with his panic.
"You can't cut me off the team!" The chair screeched as he shot to his feet.
"Do you know how much I've worked for this? How much I've sacrificed!? "
"You have invested in nothing but the illusion of your importance." I didn't turn around. My reflection in the glass showed a man utterly still, utterly calm, while behind him, a puppet thrashed against his strings. "And the only thing you've sacrificed is your dignity, which was, I must admit, a negligible asset to begin with."
"Get your resignation letter ready. Invent a story that doesn't involve Ásta. Leave before I'm forced to make you."
"Is it money?" He voice cracked, a fissure in the facade wide enough to see the terrified child underneath. "Name your price! Anything! That...that woman isn't worth this!"
A dry, mirthless chuckle escaped me. The only honest sound I'd made all day.
I turned from the window. Slow. Deliberate. I didn't walk toward him, I simply began to close the distance, my steps silent on the carpet. There was no need for speed. No hunger driving me. Just the quiet satisfaction of watching something die exactly on schedule.
"You quite literally blew your only chance."
My voice was low. Even.
He took a step back. Then another. His retreat instinctual.
"I gave you one task. One. Bring her back. Make her see reason. Whatever pathetic lever you had, use it."
Another step forward. Another step back.
"Instead, you came to me with a proposal to discard her. You didn't even try. You assumed i would reward your cowardice with complicity."
I continued my advance until I was close enough to see the sweat beading on his upper lip, to smell the fear cutting through the cheap bergamot. Close enough to watch his pupils dilate with the recognition of his own smallness.
"So no, Örn. This is not about money. This is not about her. This is about being so fundamentally, irredeemably useless that the universe itself has decided to prune you from its narrative."
I stopped. Loomed. He was pressed against the door, nowhere left to flee. His face a portrait of utter devastation. The essential smallness he'd hidden behind polished lies was now fully exposed. Raw. Pulsing. Alive.
"I am purging the project of its most superficial element." I let the silence stretch. "And that element is you."
I watched the collapse. The final crumbling of an act that had never been written well enough. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. No sound emerged. Just a desperate, fish like gasp of a man who'd finally run out of script.
"Now," my voice dropped to a whisper, the kind that demands silence to be heard. "What is your next move?"
"I... I'll... g.. get... " He stammered, his mind broken. His eyes wide and wet.
"Has your vocabulary finally collapsed under the weight of its own emptiness?"
"Tender my resignation." The words were barely audible. His fists clenched at his sides in powerless fury.
"Get out."
I turned my back. The conversation was already over. Had been the moment he walked in. He just hadn't realized it.
I heard the fumble for the doorknob. The sharp inhale, a man remembering how to breathe. The door opened. Closed. A final, soft click.
The stench of his failure lingered for a moment. Then the sterile office air swept it away, as it did everything else eventually.
'A tedious but necessary purge.'
I returned to my desk. Pulled out my phone. Her name glowed on the screen, the message I'd sent days ago, still unanswered.
Silence.
I set the phone down. Looked at the window. The city moved on. And somewhere out there, Ásta Njáll was writing something that would either save us all or burn us to the ground.
I found, to my mild surprise, that I didn't particularly care which.
Örn's POV
'How dare he!!
Who does he think he is, waltzing in here and treating me like some common employee!?'
I stormed through the office, ignoring the greetings of my subordinates. The smiles I'd once seen as tributes to my greatness now felt like mocking jabs. They all knew. They had to know. Word traveled fast in buildings like this.
I slammed my office door shut. The sound was pathetic. A poor substitute for the scream building in my chest.
"You are going to pay for this, Laurus." I was already moving toward my coat. "You have no idea who you are dealing with."
My father would hear about this. A few calls. A discreet transfer of funds to the right people on the board. A word in the right ear. This was a temporary setback. A minor skirmish lost, not the war.
I would have that arrogant bastard removed within the week.
That's when I saw it.
A plain Manila folder. Centered perfectly on my desk.
It hadn't been there before I left.
"What now?" I muttered, my irritation spiking. Probably some last-minute busywork that idiot assistant dumped on me. As if i didn't have more important things to handle. As if my time was theirs to waste.
With a sigh of profound annoyance, I snatched it up and flipped it open.
The cold reality slammed into me.
I fell back into my chair. The breath, gone. Knocked from my lungs by a single devastating blow.
"This... This can't be..."
My eyes wide with terror now, scanned the pages. A frantic, damning montage of my own demise. Bank statements with circled transfers, transfers I'd routed through shell companies, through accounts that didn't exist, through layers of financial fog thick enough to lose armies.
E-mails I'd sent from encrypted accounts.
Text messages I was certain I'd deleted. Phone records. Meeting logs. Photographs.
"I thought... I wiped everything... How could he...?"
The words leaped off the page. Each one a nail in my professional coffin.
Fraud.
Embezzlement.
Bribery.
They were just tools, the necessary means for a man of ambitions to climb.
Everyone did it. Everyone. I was just... better at it. More efficient. More discreet.
Or so I'd thought.
Now, these tools, these necessary, innocent tools, were weapons. Aimed at the very architect of that empire they'd helped build. By an envious, small-minded, untalented attack dog who couldn't recognize genius if it bit him.
I dropped my head in my hands. A wave of righteous despair washed over me.
The injustice was staggering.
And through despair, the clarifying truth emerged. The undeniable root of this catastrophe.
This wasn't about Daníelson's overreach. It wasn't about a misunderstanding of complex financial instruments. It wasn't even about me.
This was all because of HER.
Her instability. Her failure. Her very existence. She had created the crack in the foundation that a man like Daníelson could exploit to tear down everything I had built.
Her.
I looked up. The room swam. My hand reached for the glass on my desk, water, not gin, because I was professional, I was in control, and knocked it.
It tipped. Tilted. Began its fall.
I caught it. An inch from the edge. My hand shot out, fingers closing around the glass, and for a moment, I just held it there, frozen.
'I caught it. I'm still in control. I'm still..'
The panic in my grip visible in my knuckles. My reflection in the water distorted. A wide-eyed, trembling stranger.
"Pride attaches undue importance to the superiority of one's status in the eyes of others; and shame is fear of humiliation at one's inferior status in the estimation of others."
-Jane Austen