Page 1 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
1
MALEK
The boardroom smells like cedar oil, new carpet, and fresh-cut power. Clean, precise, expensive.
I watch the men around the obsidian table fidget in their chairs, eyes flicking toward each other like mice realizing the cat is still hungry. Most of them are older, pale-faced from too much time behind screens and not enough behind consequences. Their suits are cut to perfection, hair parted just so, but none of that masks the way their hearts hammer just a little too fast when I don’t speak right away.
Let them wait.
Silence can be a blade. And in this room—on this floor, inmytower—every breath they take is by my permission. The light above is muted, casting everything in a gray glow, softening nothing. Geneva sprawls out beyond the wall of windows behind me, steel and glass catching the dying light like teeth.
“Mr. Thorne,” Markelson begins, clearing his throat with a little too much urgency. “What Mr. Cho meant was?—”
“I know what he meant,” I say without raising my voice. “That doesn’t make it less idiotic.”
Across the table, Cho stiffens. He’s younger, sharper than the rest, thinks he understands power because he’s read a few books about it and convinced himself he sees angles no one else does. What he doesn’t see is the line he’s crossed, and the fact that I already decided how this ends before I walked in.
“We’ve had internal concerns,” Cho says, pushing forward despite the weight of his own sweat. “About the visibility of certain projects. The oversight structure is?—”
“Is what I designed,” I interrupt, leaning back in the chair with the slow grace of someone who could end his career with a look. “Your ‘concerns’ are noted. Now forget them.”
He flinches, but to his credit, doesn’t back down. Markelson does, eyes cast low, fingers fiddling with his pen like a man wondering if he just backed the wrong horse.
They always wonder. Right until I remind them.
I stand. Not fast. No need for theatrics. Just enough to remind them I don’t need a title to rule this room. My shadow stretches long across the table as I walk its length, passing behind them like a storm cloud made flesh. Cho stiffens when I stop behind his chair.
“You think I didn’t see what you were trying to do?” I ask, voice quieter now, more dangerous. “You think Sullivan from the DOJ landed here on his own? That a federal investigation just happened to sniff at the one division I buried deeper than a Cold War missile silo?”
No one answers.
I place a hand on the back of Cho’s chair. His spine goes ramrod straight.
“You sent him. And when that didn’t work fast enough, you came for the board.” I pause. “I admire ambition. But not when it overreaches.”
Another beat of silence, stretched taut and trembling.
“Get out,” I say.
No yelling or threats. Just a command.
They scatter. Markelson fumbling with his folder, Cho muttering apologies, the others grabbing tablets and clearing data like it’ll save them. It won’t. The door closes behind them with a soft, final click.
The quiet that settles isn’t peace, it’s dominion.
I cross the room toward the windows and press one hand to the glass. The city breathes below, lights winking on like stars fallen to earth. I built this: every contract, every corridor, every loyal shadow in every corner of the world. Not through trust. Through control.
And control is what keeps the lion asleep.
Or so I tell myself.
The tug starts low, behind my ribs, like a hook I didn’t know was still lodged there. It’s not a thought, not a sound. It’s something older.Deeper.Like instinct waking from a long sleep.
My breath slows. Muscles tense.
I know this feeling.
I haven't felt it in over a century, and still I recognize it the way a dying man knows the sound of his own name.
