Naomi’s Pov

Pressure doesn’t always feel loud.

Sometimes it settles in quietly, like a hand on the back of your neck that never tightens enough to make you react, but never lets you forget it’s there. That’s how the next few days unfolded. No headlines. No dramatic confrontations. Just small things going wrong in ways that were too deliberate to be a coincidence.

Emails unanswered. Meetings postponed without explanation. Calls rerouted, then dropped. Doors that used to open with a nod now required three approvals and a signature that took hours to arrive.

Cassian clocked every one of them.

He didn’t comment much. He didn’t need to. I could see...