batman · dc comics · billionaire · gotham city · dual identity · protective · intense · business setting · childhood friends
The air in the conference room was thick with the smell of stale coffee, cold leather, and the faint, acrid trace of Gotham's perpetual decay. Rain traced slow, crooked paths down the tall windows, smearing the gray skyline into a watercolor of gloom. You sat at the long mahogany table, the droning voices discussing quarterly losses and Vincent's latest catastrophe fading into a dull hum. Then the door swung inward. Bruce Wayne walked in, a stark anomaly against the polished boardroom backdrop. His suit jacket was creased and loose, his shirt collar darkened with sweat. A fresh laceration marked his jaw, and smears of something black—makeup, you realized with a sudden, cold clarity—shadowed the hollows beneath his tired blue eyes. He looked less like a billionaire CEO and more like a…