The days between acceptance letters and Saturday morning dissolved into training sessions, al prep, and the specific dostic chaos that surfaces when two won with strong opinions find themselves on the sa shared furniture docunt. Diane’s list ran by room, sorted by vendor. Sloane’s ran by vibe, populated by screenshots from Instagram that she’d zood in on until the pixel count gave up.
Three separate throw pillow argunts by Thursday evening.
I stayed out of it. Two months in this body had taught that the single most dangerous position in the Fitzgerald household was between Diane and Sloane when they both needed to be right. My job in those monts was to nod at the correct intervals, agree with whoever had eyes on , and find sowhere else to be when the conversation turned to thread counts.
Saturday arrived the way California mornings always did, with that particular golden aggressiveness that had no interest in my sleep schedule. Boundless Stamina ant four hours was sufficient. I’d gotten three, because Diane had decided eleven PM was an appropriate ti to find out whether the enhancent effect scaled with intensity, and it did, emphatically, for the better part of ninety minutes.
Showered. Dark jeans. White fitted henley that Diane had purchased for on Thursday, described as "casual but competent," which I understood as her dressing like a display model because she genuinely could not help herself.
The sleeves pushed back past my forearms, where two months of training had left sothing worth noticing. The collar sat open wide enough to show the collarbone that Sloane had bitten hard enough to matter, three days ago.
I looked good. I looked like soone who belonged in a furniture store spending money he hadn’t technically earned on apartnts he’d gotten into through a combination of genuine effort and a dating sim engine that paid out for sleeping with his guardian and her daughter.
My life was a fever dream with a credit card attached.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, the Range Rover’s keys hanging from my right hand. Morning light ca through the tall windows and spread across the hardwood floors in that particular California gold that turned everything into a magazine spread. From upstairs, movent. Running water from one bathroom. A hair dryer from the other. The recognizable chaos of two won who had agreed on a departure ti and were now treating it as a general suggestion.
"We’re leaving at nine," I called up the staircase. "It’s eight forty-two."
A door opened. Sloane’s voice ca off the hallway walls.
"Twenty minutes!"
A second door. Diane’s voice, warr and lower.
"Twenty minutes, sugar!"
I looked at the ceiling. I looked at the keys. I walked to the living room couch, sat down, and picked up the remote because twenty minutes ant forty and the television was right there.
The one upside was that Diane had told I could drive. She treated those car keys like state secrets. Sloane had her own coupe, a black thing that handled like a go-kart with personal grievances, but the family SUV was Diane’s territory. Matte grey Range Rover. Leather seats that cost more than most people’s monthly rent. A sound system that probably required a permit. I’d driven it twice in two months, both tis supervised, both tis with Diane delivering comntary on my lane changes that felt less like guidance and more like a formal performance review.
This morning she’d tossed the keys across the breakfast table without a word. Just "You’re driving" and a smile that could have ant she was rewarding sothing I’d done correctly or preparing sothing I hadn’t seen coming yet.
The flat screen above the fireplace was the size of a small country, one of those eighty-five inch panels that put you in the front row of whatever was on. The Hero Sports Network loaded by default, the way it always did in this house, and the split-screen studio of Point of Impact filled the wall.
8:48 on a Saturday. The show ran weekdays at nine, but Saturday pulled the week’s highest-rated segnts on a loop from eight onward. I’d caught pieces of it over the past two months, usually with Sloane at the breakfast table providing live comntary that was louder and significantly more profane than anything either host produced.
Malcolm rcer held the left side of the screen. Silver hair swept back from the high forehead. Dark suit, gold pocket square. The reading glasses on the end of his nose that he never actually used for reading. He was already leaning forward, one palm flat on the desk, the other hand pointing at sothing off cara with the energy of a man who woke up every morning in search of a confrontation and took it personally when noon arrived without one.
Sabrina Jane sat across from him in a fitted erald blazer, red hair in loose waves past her shoulders. Small gold dagger earrings. I’d watched enough of this show to read the earrings. Daggers ant she’d co to make soone bleed.
The lower third read: TEMPEST INTERVIEW, RECORDED THURSDAY.
The segnt had already started. The studio’s third chair held soone I’d logged in research sessions but never seen in a live context.
Roza Guseva sat with her legs crossed and her arms folded tight across her chest, like she’d been asked to co to television and had decided to bring her entire personality as a counterargunt.
She was small. That was the first thing. Her fra made the studio chair look like furniture built for soone else, like the producers had accidentally booked a teenager and nobody had caught it in ti. Pale blonde in a practical bob. Green eyes sharp enough to communicate active grievance toward the concept of being fild. Dark cargo pants. A fitted black base layer that she apparently wore to everything, including nationally broadcast interview programs. No visible concession to the setting whatsoever.
She looked like she’d co directly from a combat zone and considered this detour a personal insult.
"Tempest." rcer used the warmth he reserved for Heroes he considered worth his ti, a short list he protected carefully. "Your case record this quarter is frankly astonishing. Seventeen resolved in four months, three of them S-tier threats that other agencies had sitting in queue for weeks. Does the pace concern you at all?"
"No."
User Comments
0 comments from readers