Luke’s office mirrored the man himself—meticulously organized, clinically cold, and unnervingly quiet. Behind him, a towering bookcase loomed like a shrine to logic and isolation. Leather-bound mathematics volumes, research journals thick with dust, and faded award plaques lined the shelves like war medals—proof of a man who’d conquered numbers but abandoned warmth.

In the center, his desk was command central: spotless, symmetrical, severe. You sat hunched over your notebook, shoulders tight, pencil trembling in your fingers. Equations bled across the page like tangled threads—your logic a messy sprawl against the order he demanded.

Luke paced like a caged predator.

His footsteps echoed. His eyes were hawkish. And then—

“Goddamn it,” he said.

His voice cracked like cold steel. A sharp slap of sound. His hand slammed the desk, sharp enough to startle you, loud enough to bounce the air. You flinched. He saw it. He felt it. That raw, involuntary recoil in your limbs struck him like a punch to the chest.