Chapter Two The Glass Orbit #3
Rovanth didn't look up, but the rigid line of his jaw relaxed just a fraction. “The valuation on the secondary infrastructure assets is inflated by roughly twelve percent. They think we won't notice because we're focused on the primary telecom licenses.”
“They're fools, then,” Ananya smiled, a sharp, elegant curve of her lips. “Send it back. Tell them we'll walk if they don't correct the padding.”
Rovanth finally lifted his eyes, his gaze locking onto hers. The calculating intensity in his expression shifted into something resembling respect. “I already drafted the email. It goes out in five minutes.”
Ananya chuckled, swirling the dark liquid in her glass. She loved this about him. The sheer, uncompromising competence. They operated on the exact same wavelength.
She let a comfortable silence stretch between them for a moment, the ambient hum of the city far below serving as white noise. Then, she shifted slightly against the leather cushions, deciding to raise the minor nuisance she had heard about earlier that day.
“By the way,” Ananya said, her tone light, conversational, devoid of accusation. “It seems you have a shadow on the lower floors.”
Rovanth signed the bottom of the document with a gold pen. “A shadow?”
“A junior employee. In Corporate Communications, I believe,” Ananya continued, studying her nails briefly.
“I wouldn't normally mention it, you know how the rumor mill works here, but it's apparently become something of a spectator sport for the HR and marketing teams. They say she’s been nursing quite the infatuation. Orbiting your floor. Lingering near the elevators. That sort of thing.”
Rovanth paused, his pen hovering over the thick parchment paper.
He accessed the vast, hyper-organized filing system of his mind. He recalled the faces of the thousands of employees he had seen over the past year. He thought of the communications department.
A fleeting image materialized. A young woman with wide, expressive eyes and a nervous energy.
The one who had looked at him during the intern orientation as if he had descended from the sky rather than stepped out of a boardroom.
He had seen her a few times since, always hovering on the periphery, always clutching a notebook or a binder like a lifeline.
Anshira, his mind supplied. That was the name on her security badge.
Ananya watched him over the rim of her wine glass, waiting to see if he would register irritation or amusement. “The girls in legal seem to think she's a schemer. Trying to orchestrate a moment with the undisputed heir.”
Rovanth set his pen down. The gold clicked softly against the marble desk.
He processed the information with the same cold, analytical detachment he used to evaluate the inflated infrastructure assets.
Was this employee a security risk? No. Was she violating any corporate compliance protocols?
Technically, no. Was her behavior impacting the stock price, the public image of KDG, or the internal efficiency of the communications department?
Her performance reviews, which he routinely scanned for all departments, were actually quite high.
He ran the variables, weighed the potential threat, and arrived at a definitive conclusion in less than three seconds.
“Irrelevant,” Rovanth stated.
Ananya raised an eyebrow. “You don't care that one of your employees is treating you like a teenage idol?”
“I don't care what my employees think of me, Ananya, as long as they generate results,” Rovanth replied, his deep voice smooth and utterly devoid of emotion.
He picked up his tumbler of whiskey, taking a measured sip.
“People project all sorts of things onto this family. Wealth, power, malice... romance. It is inconsequential.”
“So, you won't have HR speak to her?”
Rovanth looked at Ananya, his dark eyes flat, calm, and completely unbothered. “To what end? To punish a young woman for a passing curiosity? It is a waste of my time, and it is beneath my notice. Let her look. It changes nothing about how this company operates.”
He turned his attention back to the merger document, the matter already deleted from his immediate processing queue. To Rovanth Kalresh-Dhen, a man groomed to carry the weight of empires, the starry-eyed infatuation of Anshira Kaul was less than a breeze against a fortress wall.
It was nothing.
Ananya smiled, satisfied. It was exactly the response she had expected. She took another sip of her wine, returning her gaze to the sprawling, glittering lights of the city.
Down in her small apartment across town, Anshira was sitting on her bed, happily reading a dog-eared paperback novel, completely unaware that she had just been discussed and dismissed by the two most powerful people in her world.
She was unaware of the office politics that had painted a target on her back, unaware of the hostile whispers of the other women, and completely, blissfully unaware of just how insignificant her grand, fairy-tale romance was to the prince she had built it around.
For now, the glass orbit remained intact. But in the world of the Kalresh-Dhen dynasty, glass was made to be shattered.