He displayed the title slide.

“I practically lived and breathed this report for the past month, so I hope you’ll appreciate all my hard work.”

Nina almost choked on her coffee.

“Shh. I’m enjoying this.”

The presentation began normally. Elias confidently discussed revenue growth, project milestones, and quarterly targets while pointing to the financial charts.

Margaret occasionally nodded.

Then he advanced to the next slide.

A bold heading appeared:

**THE HIDDEN COST OF AGING EMPLOYEES**

Beneath it were bullet points claiming employees over fifty were less creative, had difficulty adapting to technology, and imposed excessive costs on companies.

Margaret immediately sat upright.

“Elias. What exactly am I looking at?”

He turned toward the screen and froze.

“Oh. That must be some kind of formatting mistake.”

Margaret remained expressionless.

“A formatting mistake doesn’t write an entire paragraph.”

Elias reached for his laptop.

“Let me just skip—”

“No. I’d like to understand why you thought this belonged in a business presentation.”