“Yeah.”
“Alone.”
“Well, there was a golf cart at some point, so I did know I wasn’t lost or anything.” I shrugged.
A flicker passed through the room, and I could see one or two of them were trying to stifle their laughter.
“Did they see you?”
My cheeks heated. “I, um … weeeeell, I might have hidden in a bush.”
Sasha closed his eyes for one restrained second. When he opened them again, they were darker.
“You hid from security.”
“It was more of a shrub-based pause.”
A long silence settled over the table. One of the men near the corner shifted slightly closer to the muffins.
Sasha clocked it immediately.
“Don’t,” he said calmly, without looking away from me.
The man froze mid-reach, and I tilted my head. “Oh come on, you’re not gonna let them eat the muffins? I made them for you guys! You can’t ban muffins, Sasha. That’s authoritarian.”
“This,” Sasha said slowly, “is not a café.”
“It could be.”
“It’s not.”
I slid the box a few inches toward the center of the table anyway.
“Says who?” I challenged, raising one brow and folding my arms across my chest.
He threw his hands up in exasperation. “Me!”
I peered around. “Who here wants muffins? Show of hands.”
There was a charged second where I could feel at least six grown men calculating whether accepting baked goods from the boss’s … whatever I was … counted as insubordination.
“This is not a fucking democracy, Addy. It’s a dictatorship and guess who calls the shots?”
Meanwhile, the oldest man — with his thick shoulders, scar along his jaw and imposing presence — had reached forward deliberately.
He took a muffin just as Sasha finished his sentence, turning to look at him guiltily.
The entire warehouse fell silent, and Sasha’s posture shifted almost imperceptibly. The man examined the muffin as though it might be poisoned, then took a bite and chewed obnoxiously.
“This good,” he said flatly, his voice heavily accented.
That was it — the fracture line.
Within seconds, two more hands reached in. Someone carefully moved a blueprint to avoid crumbs, muttering something in Russian sounding suspiciously approving. Sasha stared at the table as though he were witnessing a hostile takeover executed via baked goods.
I smiled at him brightly. “See? Morale.”
With his gaze fixed on me like a predator regarding its prey, he stalked up to me. He lowered his voice just enough to ensure it wouldn’t carry. “You just walked into a live operational briefing.”