CHRISTOFEight men occupied the room with me, it sat in the top floor of one of my buildings. The space had once been an open industrial loft, before I stripped it down and rebuilt it into a fort. There was no glass walls, no long corridors leading in. Just one reinforced door, one way in, one way out.You could still see the bones of the place, the high ceiling, the exposed beams, the scars in the concrete where machinery had once been bolted down. I chose the space because nothing in it echoed, voices stayed contained, so did tension.Each man was powerful enough to run entire operations on their own. Each one used to being the final voice wherever they went.Except here.Some men sat, the others stood around the table at the center. It wasn’t decorative. It was a single slab of dark wood, thick enough to take weight, old enough to have history. No assigned seats, no hierarchy displayed. Here, hierarchy was understood. This was where decisions got made and lived with.I stayed on my
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