The second cupcake sat untouched on Rudra's desk, neatly wrapped as though it belonged there. His phone rested beside it, screen black, silent.
Rudra tapped his pen against the table once, twice, then finally set it down. He picked up his phone, unlocked it, and hesitated for a moment. Words were not his weakness in the boardroom — but here, now, they felt heavy.
After a pause, he typed:
"Thank you… for the delivery."
He stared at the words. Too formal. Too cold. He deleted them.
He tried again.
"Cupcakes were good. Coffee too."
Still wrong. He exhaled through his nose, irritated at himself.
Finally, with one last attempt, he typed:
"Thanks. I… liked it."
It wasn't smooth. It wasn't poetic. But it was honest. He hit send before he could overthink it further.
The reply came faster than expected.
"It's ok… 😉"
Rudra blinked at the tiny winking emoji. His lips pressed into a line — not in annoyance, but in a rare flicker of shy surprise. A man who terrified boardrooms and bent empires felt… momentarily disarmed by a playful symbol on a screen.
He set the phone face-down, leaned back in his chair, and exhaled slowly. His fingers tapped against the desk again, a faint heat creeping up the back of his neck.
The office around him hummed with routine activity, staff oblivious to the quiet war happening in their CEO's chest.
Rudra Malhotra, untouchable, unreadable, unshaken… had just thanked someone. And more dangerously — he didn't regret it.
________________________________________
The evening boardroom was filled with polished shoes, crisp suits, and the faint shuffle of papers. Two parties had gathered, results lined neatly in charts and presentations. Everything seemed orderly—until it wasn't.
"Mr. Malhotra," one journalist began, his tone sharp, almost mocking, "isn't it true that your numbers are padded? Some of these results look… incomplete."
The room stiffened.
Rudra's eyes lifted slowly from the document in his hand. His gaze, calm and unreadable, locked onto the man. The silence that followed was suffocating.
When he finally spoke, his voice was clear, neat, professional, and ice-cold.
"No," Rudra said flatly. "Nothing is padded. The projections are supported by verified data. Page six, section three, paragraph four — read it again. And if comprehension is difficult for you, I suggest you hire someone qualified to assist you."
A few people swallowed hard. The journalist smirked, arrogant enough to press on.
"Then why—"
But before he could finish, Rudra's senior manager, pale as chalk, leaned forward sharply.
"That will be enough," he cut in, tone tight, eyes wide with warning.
The journalist froze, finally sensing the chill in the air. Rudra closed the file on the desk with a quiet snap. The sound was louder than thunder in the silence that followed.
And just like that, his mood was ruined.
By the time Rudra left the room, every single person in the company—from the interns on the first floor to the janitors on the thirtieth—was silently cursing the journalist's existence. Not behind Rudra's back. Out loud. On his face.
"Idiot."
"Why would you even open your mouth?"
"You've killed us all."
The silence that followed Rudra down the hallway was absolute. No one dared to move. No one dared to breathe too loudly. The tension spread like wildfire, until the entire building felt it: Rudra Malhotra was displeased.
And when Rudra Malhotra was displeased… everyone was terrified for their jobs, their futures, their lives.
Even the senior executives kept their heads down, sweat beading on their brows. Even the janitors in the hallways avoided eye contact.
The journalist, however, walked out of the building still smug—until he returned to his own office.
His boss had already heard.
"You—!" The man's voice cracked like a whip. "Do you have any idea what you've just done? Do you know who he is? What he can do? You've put this entire company in danger!"
The journalist blinked, finally realizing that his arrogance had carried him into a fire he couldn't escape. His boss nearly broke down yelling, spittle flying, hands gripping his own hair in frustration.
The journalist sank into a chair, pale, stomach dropping. Only now did he understand:
He hadn't just annoyed a CEO. He had poked at the one man in the business world who could ruin him without lifting a finger.
And on thirty floors of Rudra Malhotra's empire, a silence lingered—terrified, suffocating, unshakable.
To be continued....