They took the elevator back down to the first floor, beginning their tour from the ground up.
Cosmos Group’s business scope was incredibly broad, spanning a variety of sectors.
The first and second floors housed the logistics company.
Massive electronic screens displayed shipping routes stretching across the country and even overseas.
Employees bustled about in the open-plan office space, the sounds of ringing phones and clacking keyboards rising and falling in continuous waves.
Silas Sutton walked slowly, observing everything with meticulous attention.
He stopped from time to time to watch the employees work, occasionally asking a question or two that always cut straight to the heart of the matter.
Henry Grant had been a little nervous at first, but he quickly realized that while the new CEO didn’t talk much, his understanding of the business was profoundly deep.
The questions he raised always hit the core issues directly.
The third through sixth floors were dedicated to the catering, hospitality, and entertainment divisions.
The seventh and eighth floors housed the domestic trade companies, primarily dealing in the wholesale of building materials and electronics.
The atmosphere here was noticeably more intense than on the lower floors.
Every employee seemed to be rushing, and the phones rang incessantly.
Silas stood behind a salesman who was on the phone for a moment.
He listened to the man’s pitch to a client and nodded in approval.
The ninth floor and above belonged to the multinational trade companies, boasting an even broader scope of business.
Most of the employees here spoke fluent foreign languages.
Silas stopped in front of a world map that highlighted Cosmos Group’s overseas business networks.
He asked a few questions, and Henry immediately pulled up the relevant data to give a verbal report.
Silas nodded and didn’t ask anything else, but his fingers lightly traced across the map, eventually resting on a specific location.
There were only a few scattered markers there; clearly, their business presence in that region was still quite weak.
Throughout the entire tour, Silas said very little, yet his observations were incredibly keen.
He paid attention to whether the employees’ workstations were tidy, noted whether the office lighting was comfortable, and even lingered in the pantry to check on the supply of coffee and tea.
These details secretly astonished Special Assistant Grant.
The new CEO’s focus was entirely different from that of previous management.
Sean Crane and Ryan Rhodes, however, were focused on something else entirely.
They noticed that throughout the tour, Silas had taken out his phone to check it no less than ten times.
Each time, he would quickly wake the screen, glance at it, then let it go dark before slipping it back into his pocket.
The gesture was so subtle it was almost imperceptible to others, but both of them knew exactly what he was waiting for—a phone call that might never come.
When the tour reached the fifteenth floor, Silas suddenly stopped in his tracks.
This floor housed the group’s conference rooms and training center.
At that moment, a departmental meeting was taking place in the largest conference room.
Through the glass walls, they could see the room was packed with people, and a middle-aged man was explaining something in front of a whiteboard.
Silas stood outside the glass wall for a while, watching the scene inside.
Sean followed his line of sight and realized that Silas wasn’t actually watching the meeting at all.
His gaze was focused on an empty point in space, holding a trace of almost imperceptible pain deep within his eyes.
“Mr.
Sutton?” Ryan called out softly.
Silas snapped back to reality and took a deep breath.
“Let’s go.
Back to the office.”
Upon returning to the CEO’s office on the sixteenth floor, Silas didn’t sit down immediately.
Once again, he walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and gazed off into the distance toward The Normal University.
With his boss staring out the window without a word, Henry stood in the middle of the office, feeling somewhat at a loss.
Sean shot him a look, signaling for him to step outside first.
Getting the hint, Henry bowed slightly.
“Mr.
Sutton, I’ll take my leave now.
Please call me anytime if you need anything.”
The office door clicked shut gently, leaving only Silas, Sean, and Ryan inside.
Silence spread through the spacious office.
Silas stood with his back to them, his silhouette looking somewhat lonely against the backdrop of the massive windows.
“Boss, you…” Ryan finally couldn’t help but speak up, yet he didn’t know what to say.
Silas turned around.
His face had already returned to a state of calm, and his lips were even curled into that familiar, roguish smile.
However, the smile didn’t reach his eyes; it was as if he had put on a meticulously crafted mask.
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
“Notify the group’s top executives.
We’re holding a meeting in half an hour.”
Sean and Ryan both froze.
Earlier at the university, so as not to interrupt their boss’s reunion with the woman he loved, they had deliberately dragged the talkative Lena Cole away to give them some distance.
Later, they saw the boss’s future wife crying, and it seemed their boss was comforting her in a low voice.
In the end, though, she had walked away alone, and their boss’s mood had instantly plummeted to rock bottom.
They could figure it out with their eyes closed—their boss had definitely been dumped.
They had assumed Silas would need time to process his emotions, that he would wait at least a few days before officially starting work.
They never expected him to convene an executive meeting right this second.
“Do you want to rest for a bit first?
The meeting could be tomorrow…” Sean suggested cautiously.
“Right now.” Silas’s tone left no room for doubt.
“I want to know the true state of the company.
Immediately.”
Sean and Ryan exchanged a glance.
Knowing persuasion was useless, they could only nod. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“Oh, alright!
We’ll have Special Assistant Grant arrange it right away.”
The two of them exited the office, quietly pulling the door shut behind them.
Outside, Henry was waiting.
Seeing them emerge, he immediately approached them.
“Mr.
Crane, Mr.
Rhodes, does Mr.
Sutton have any instructions?”
“Notify all the top executives to meet in the main conference room in half an hour,” Sean said quickly.
“Vice presidents, department directors, branch managers—no one is allowed to be absent.”
Henry looked troubled.
“Now?
Some of the executives might have already left for lunch.”
“Then call them back,” Ryan said, his tone uncharacteristically serious.
“Tell everyone that this is Mr.
Sutton’s first meeting since taking office.
Anyone who misses it will bear the consequences.”
A jolt went through Henry’s heart.
He nodded hastily.
“Yes, I’ll go notify them immediately.”
Sean and Ryan didn’t leave.
They stood in the assistant area outside the office, looking at Silas through the glass wall.
He was still standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, his back perfectly straight, but his hand was reaching into the inner pocket of his suit jacket yet again.
“Mr.
Crane, the boss…” Ryan lowered his voice, his face etched with worry.
Sean sighed.
“Let him work.
At least work can keep his mind off of those things for a while.”
“But look at him.
He’s clearly dying inside, but he’s forcing himself to pretend nothing’s wrong.” Ryan ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
“Is Sprout really that important to him?”
“Don’t you remember three years ago?” Sean’s voice sounded somewhat ethereal.
“Back then, even though he was always fighting and killing, there was a light in his eyes.
It was probably because he held Sprout in his heart.”
Ryan fell silent for a moment.
“So what do we do now?
We just watch him force himself to keep going?”
“What else can we do?
All we can do is help him manage the company’s affairs so he has less to worry about,” Sean said.
“As for the rest…
we can only leave it to time.”