The air on the seventh floor was sterile. Too clean. The kind of clean that didn’t happen by accident but by design—repressed, like everything else in this building. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a pale, unforgiving glow across a maze of grey cubicles where people moved like ghosts. Typing. Filing. Not speaking.

At the front desk, a woman in a tailored black blazer glanced up. She looked at Y/N like she was already calculating how long before she cracked.

But Y/N didn’t flinch. She adjusted the strap on her bag, noted the way every cubicle occupant seemed to pretend she didn’t exist, and started walking.

The first rule of working at Blackridge wasn’t written anywhere.

She was about to find out why.