The park felt like an extension of brunch—warm, unhurried, threaded with small moments that didn’t ask to be noticed.Adrian and Elana drifted along the wide walking path, the air carrying the layered sounds of a Sunday afternoon: a guitarist near the fountain, laughter spilling from a picnic blanket, the distant bark of a dog chasing something only it could see. Vendors lined one side of the path, their tables dotted with handmade goods—ceramic cups with uneven rims, wire-wrapped stones, carved wood figures polished smooth by patient hands.Elana slowed at one of the tables without saying anything.Adrian noticed because he always did.The vendor, a woman with sun-creased eyes and a gentle smile, had arranged a small collection of trinkets—simple, distinctive pieces that felt personal rather than ornamental. Elana’s fingers hovered over a pendant shaped like a leaf, its surface textured with faint veins, the metal warm and imperfect in a way that

The room didn’t stay quiet for long.Once the division dispersed, the sound returned—not chatter, but the low, constant rhythm of work beginning in earnest. Keyboards clicking. Chairs shifting. Screens filling with contracts that hadn’t been opened in years. Adrian moved through the space without hurry, watching the system he’d described start to take shape in real time.No one looked uncertain. That mattered.The teams had been built deliberately. Each group worked independently, reviewing identical categories of contracts but from different angles—structure, payment flow, control mechanisms. Nothing moved forward without at least two confirmations. Nothing escalated without three.Adrian took his place at a central desk rather than an office. It was intentional. Visibility mattered more than hierarchy at this stage.He logged in and pulled the master tracking dashboard up on his screen. Contracts populated the queue in steady waves