About This Draft

This is a working draft — rev 2026-06-06 (707856b).

You’re reading an unfinished book. Scenes will move, characters will change, and whole chapters may not survive. Please don’t judge it by its typos or its loose ends — those are known, and they’ll be fixed.

What I’m really asking is this: does it ring true? Most of you have spent your working lives in advancement, and you can feel when a shop, a gift conversation, or a moment of office politics is honest — or off. That’s the read I can’t get anywhere else, and it’s the one I most want from you.

When something lands, or when it doesn’t, tell me. There’s a short, no-sign-in feedback link at the end of each chapter.

A request: this draft is shared in confidence. Please don’t forward the link or the access code — point anyone who’d like to read it back to me, and I’ll add them.

— Vivek