Chapter Text
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime.
For a moment, no one moved.
It was not the ordinary quiet of an office settling into the workday. This silence had weight to it. People were waiting.
Forty two floors above BGC, the executive corridor of the Hidalgo-Sy headquarters had always carried a certain presence. Glass walls framed the skyline beyond the building. Marble floors reflected the pale light of the morning sun. Assistants moved between offices with folders tucked neatly against their sides, and the low murmur of conversations usually filled the space.
On most days the corridor felt busy but controlled, like a machine already in motion.
This morning felt different.
A conversation near the reception desk stopped halfway through a sentence. Someone standing by the coffee station lowered their voice instinctively. A group of managers who had been reviewing documents near the window suddenly found themselves watching the elevator doors.
People stood a little straighter without realizing it.
Because today was the first day of the new CEO.
The elevator doors slid open.
Eiris Hidalgo-Sy stepped out.
She wore a grey-blue suit tailored with precise lines that followed the shape of her shoulders and waist. The color was understated but deliberate. There were no accessories beyond a watch at her wrist. Her hair was pulled neatly back, not a single loose strand escaping.
She stepped forward and the sound of her heels touched the marble floor in soft, measured echoes.
Several staff members greeted her as she passed.
“Good morning, Ma’am.”
“Good morning.”
“Morning, Ms. Eiris.”
She slowed just enough to acknowledge each of them.
“Good morning.”
Her tone remained calm and even. She did not rush the words, but she did not linger either. It was the voice of someone who had already begun thinking about the next ten decisions waiting for her.
One of the assistants who had been with the company for nearly twenty years watched her walk past and quietly adjusted the stack of documents in her arms. Another staff member straightened the collar of his shirt before stepping aside to give her space in the hallway.
Eiris continued down the corridor at a steady pace.
Through the glass walls, she could see several offices where executives had already begun their morning meetings. Screens glowed with financial models and market forecasts. A few people paused when they noticed her passing by.
Some offered respectful nods as she passed. Others simply watched in silence.
She noticed the attention without reacting to it. Her eyes remained forward, focused on the glass doors waiting at the end of the corridor.
The doors leading to the executive wing opened automatically as she approached. The quiet behind those doors felt heavier.
Inside, the boardroom lights were already on. And the people waiting inside had been watching the clock since before the elevator doors opened.
Directors occupied both sides of the long table, their folders spread neatly in front of them. A few advisors leaned toward one another, quietly discussing figures printed across several reports. Screens along the wall displayed charts and projections that had been prepared for the morning meeting.
When the door opened and Eiris stepped inside, the low conversations gradually faded.
Several executives who had spent most of their careers working alongside her mothers looked up. Their eyes followed her as she walked in. Some of them studied her with quiet curiosity. They had watched her grow up in the company hallways years ago, long before she had a title attached to her name.
Others watched with more guarded expressions.
They were not hostile. But they were careful.
Eiris continued walking toward the head of the table.
The chair waiting there had belonged to her mothers for decades. It was the seat where the company’s largest expansion plans had been approved, where acquisitions had been negotiated late into the night, and where difficult decisions had shaped the direction of the entire group of companies.
For a brief moment, she stood beside it.
Her eyes moved across the room once, taking in the faces around the table.
Then she rested her folder on the polished surface and sat down.
The quiet in the room settled again.
Across the table, someone leaned back in their chair and folded their arms comfortably.
Junelle Ramos.
Juni looked like she had walked into a casual lunch rather than a board meeting that most of the room had been preparing for all week.
She tilted her head slightly, studying Eiris with a small grin that was already threatening to become a full smile.
“Well,” Juni said, lightly tapping the table with the tip of her pen, “look at you.”
The room fell silent again.
Eiris opened the folder in front of her without looking up.
“Good morning, Juni.”
Juni leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice in a teasing tone that still carried clearly across the table.
“So,” she said, “how does it feel sitting in the big chair?”
A few executives shifted in their seats. Someone cleared his throat while another director lowered his gaze to the documents in front of him, studying the numbers as if they had suddenly become urgent.
Eiris finally lifted her gaze. Her expression remained calm.
“Like a chair,” she replied.
Juni let out a soft snort.
One of the older directors coughed into his hand while another began rearranging the papers in front of him, trying to reestablish a sense of formality.
“Well,” he said after a moment, his voice slightly strained, “I suppose we should begin.”
Eiris turned the first page of the folder.
“Actually,” she said calmly, “we already have.”
The room stilled.
She slid a document across the table toward the center where everyone could see it.
“Your agenda was updated last night,” she continued. “The revised projections are on page three.”
Pages began turning almost immediately. One director leaned forward, reading the document more carefully, while another adjusted his glasses and scanned the numbers line by line. After a few seconds, one of them looked up again, surprise clear on his face.
“You restructured the entire expansion plan.”
“Yes.”
The man glanced back down at the document.
“You did this overnight?”
Eiris met his gaze steadily.
“No.”
The pause that followed stretched across the room.
“I finished it at 3:12 this morning.”
The room grew quiet again. This time, the silence carried a different weight. Curiosity on several faces sharpened into focused attention, and the skepticism that had lingered only minutes earlier began to give way to careful evaluation.
Juni leaned back in her chair, clearly enjoying the way the room had shifted. Her gaze moved from one executive to another, watching them review the documents Eiris had just placed on the table. The reactions were subtle, but they were there. A slight nod here. A longer pause over a column of numbers there.
Then her attention drifted past Eiris. She glanced toward the glass wall behind her and tilted her head slightly.
“The office suits you, by the way,” Juni said casually.
A few people around the table looked up at the comment. Eiris followed her line of sight.
Beyond the boardroom, the CEO’s office stood just across the hallway. The glass walls allowed the entire room to be seen from where they sat. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the skyline outside, stretching across BGC in every direction. From that height, the city looked wide and restless. Buildings rose in tight clusters. Traffic moved slowly along the main roads below. The river cut through the distance like a thin ribbon of steel, reflecting the morning light.
The sun had climbed high enough now that its light caught the glass panels and spread across the boardroom table in soft reflections.
For a moment, Eiris simply looked at the office.
She closed the pen she had been holding and rested it beside the folder.
“It’s temporary,” she said.
Several heads turned toward her.
Juni raised one eyebrow.
“Oh?”
Eiris shifted her attention back to the documents spread across the table. She turned a page with calm precision.
“The work isn’t.”
The answer settled into the room.
No one spoke immediately. A few executives exchanged quiet glances. One director looked back toward the office beyond the glass, then returned his attention to the revised projections in front of him.
Juni watched Eiris for another moment before letting out a quiet breath through her nose. The hint of a smile lingered on her face, but she said nothing else.
Outside the windows, the city of BGC continued waking up. Traffic thickened along the roads below. Office towers across the district were filled with lights as more companies began their day.
Inside the boardroom, the first meeting under the new CEO had already begun moving forward. The documents on the table were being reviewed line by line. Questions were starting to form. Conversations would follow soon enough.
But the tone of the room had already changed.
Eiris had not waited for the meeting to begin.
She had already started the work.