Drinking up all the anger which was building up inside him, Raymond managed to stay still till the lift arrived at the first floor. He was eternally glad that his office was on the first floor, else he would have almost succumbed to the rage which was already burning his heart up.

Akira stepped out of the lift and Vikram followed her. After walking a few steps when they reached the bifurcation point, Akira said,

"I will take my leave now. You guys carry on". She waved at Vikram and was about to leave for her cubicle when Vikram interrupted and said,

"I will send the car for you in the evening. I can't come to pick you up as I have a few things that I need to attend to. Just text me at what time you need to leave".

"Jeez Vikram, I can just Uber. Stop worrying so much ok? Bye", Akira said and then stole a glance at Raymond who was standing there, gawking at her. Her heart grew restless to see him looking at her that way, so she just decided to walk away to her cubicle.

"This way please", Raymond said and interrupted Vikram's thought process.

While walking Raymond called up David and asked him to arrange for the required fiscal reports which Vikram wanted to check upon.

Then they both walked towards Raymond's office silently.

---

After Vikram left, Raymond called for a meeting to expedite the product launch process. First, he had a talk with the finance team and next he called up the graphic design team to check with the development process.

Before the meeting was to start, Raymond looked at Akira and said,

"From now on for all the meeting with the graphics team, you will be responsible to prepare the minutes of the meeting. make sure you jot everything down and send it over within the next hour".

Akira nodded and took out her notebook to take the notes.

"Brian, can you update me on the level plan readiness?", Raymond asked.

Brian stood up and gave the full report of all the levels which had been made ready by his team. His team had already completed the design of eleven levels and were working on five more. He summarized the plan for the next five levels and then sat down.

Raymond looked satisfied with the progress and said,

"Great, let's push to finish that by next week", Raymond said.

Then he turned towards Simon and asked about the character development status.

"We are done with the new characters which had been requested to us till Level fourteen. For the next levels, we are working on with Brian's team to understand the requirements. Once we finalize of the new characters we will start working on them. We have also requested some modifications with the guild plan color patterns to make our characters stand out", said Simon and then looked at both Brian and Raymond.

Raymond gave him an appreciatory nod and then said,

"After two weeks we have Memorial Day holidays coming up. So we want our game to be ready at that time as the reach of our advertisement will be at peak during that phase. Hope this is clear. Also, our hiring process has been completed and new experienced people are going to join the task force. So I am hopeful that from next week onwards we can increase our output."

"If things are clear, then we can adjourn this meeting as its almost lunch time", Raymond said and locked down his laptop.

The meeting was happening on the third floor so most of them decided to go directly to the fifth-floor cafeteria. But Akira first wanted to draft and complete the minutes of the meeting before having lunch. So she didn't enter the lift with others. She was waiting for a lift to go down to the first floor to her cubicle.

"Not coming with us for lunch today as well?", Kirk asked Akira when he didn't see Akira taking the lift.

"I will join you guys in 10-15 minutes", Akira said.

"Ok then. Join us for lunch once you are done. We will wait", Kirk said and lightly bumped his fist on Akira shoulder and entered the lift.

Akira gasped for air in pain. then she looked up and saw that Raymond's gaze was fixed on her. He was also waiting to take a lift to go back to his office. Scared that her actions would give away that she was hurt, she decided to leave for her floor by taking the stairs. But before she could even move an inch further, she heard.

"Come to my office now", Raymond said with a tone filled with so much authority that Akira was nearly startled. He started walking towards the emergency exit without even saying another word. Akira stood there still glued to the floor unable to understand anything.

"Which part of coming to my office you didn't understand? or Do you not like taking stairs", Raymond asked her and his voice was raised a bit as he was irritated with her behavior.

Raymond had known a few things about Akira in the last couple of days. One of them was to stay quiet even in pain. She didn't say a word when she was emotionally hurt when he said bad things about her parents. She didn't bother to attend to her injuries till he woke up in the hospital after coming out from the OT. She went for dressing her wounds only when the doctor insisted. Even in office she always covered up properly so that nobody noticed her scars. He was scared that probably Anthony had hit her shoulder earlier and she had decided to keep quiet about it.

Early in the morning when he saw her flinching in pain he knew that something was wrong and just now when she saw her in pain when Kirk had hit her shoulder, he was sure that she was hiding something and he knew that she was not going to tell until she was forced to.

"Akira, can you even hear me?", asked Raymond again as he was about to enter the emergency exit to take stairs.

"The lift is here", Akira said softly.

Her mind was going wild. She didn't understand when did she offend him.