Rhea Jha The conference room was freezing, or maybe it was just her hands that had turned cold. Aisha Kapoor adjusted the cuff of her blazer for the third time in five minutes, a nervous habit she thought she’d long abandoned. The team sat around the glass table, murmurs of speculation buzzing in the air—new leadership, potential restructuring, rumors about a merger. But all Aisha could focus on was the ticking clock on the wall, inching closer to ten. Her mind wasn’t in the present, not really. It was tangled somewhere between a finance report and a memory she had…
