They heard only delay.
Now here they are, turning your birthday into content.
You lower the phone very carefully.
Because if you don’t, you might throw it through the mirrored wall and then everyone in this restaurant will hear the exact sound a powerful man makes when he discovers power has never once purchased loyalty. Your breathing goes thin. The room tilts. Something hot and humiliating stings your eyes.
Then, despite every instinct built into you by ranch work, boardrooms, and the hard male education of never bleeding in public, tears fall anyway.