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A few people glance down at their notes.

I continue before anyone can turn the discussion into another hour of circular argument.

“The asset performs. The financing is secure. The outstanding issue is execution risk, not valuation. If we keep delaying because every regional team wants another layer of certainty, we’ll lose the advantage we built into the acquisition in the first place.”

Katherine Wolfe, seated two chairs down, closes the folder in front of her.

“Legally, six weeks is achievable,” she says.

“Assuming Frankfurt stops reopening points we settled last month.”

“They will,” I say.

David looks at me.

“You’re confident about that?”

“I’ll speak to them this afternoon.”

That ends it. No raised voices. No theatrics. No one needs them anymore. The meeting moves on.

For the next forty minutes, we work through capital allocation, two pending acquisitions, an expansion issue in New York and a Geneva restructuring that has consumed more of my calendar than I care to admit. I listen, ask questions, kill one proposal and approve another after three changes.

There was a time when I would have felt the weight of every decision separately. I don’t anymore. The responsibility is still there, but it has become ordinary. When the final agenda item closes, I glance at the clock and stand.

“That’s enough for today,” I say.

“Katherine, send me the revised legal position before four. David, I want the Frankfurt team on a call at three thirty. Richard, move the New York review to tomorrow morning.”

Richard Voss nods. “Done.”

Katherine gathers her papers.

“You’re still keeping the Zurich call at five?”

“Yes.”

David looks toward the windows.

“You’ve been back in London less than a week and somehow your schedule is already worse than Geneva.”

“It isn’t worse,” I say. “It’s just more concentrated.”

He gives me a skeptical look.

“That’s a very elegant way to describe back-to-back meetings.”

“I’ve had practice.”

The room begins to empty. I stay where I am for a moment, looking out across London while the last of the board members leave.

I haven’t spent this much uninterrupted time here in almost a year. For most of the last twelve months, my life has been divided between Geneva and New York, with London reduced to short visits that barely qualified as being back. Two days for a board matter. Three days for a family obligation. A night in Chelsea before a morning flight.

It wasn’t always like that.

In the years after my father died, London and Geneva were the center of everything. That was where the company required me, and for a long time, that was where I stayed.

Then New York expanded. One acquisition became three. Three became a larger strategy, and the amount of time I spent crossing the Atlantic increased until the city that had once been my primary base became somewhere I mostly passed through.