The Man Who Waited vs. The Man Who Wasted novel Chapter 180

Sarah showed up at Jocelyn's apartment lugging massive shopping bags filled with groceries and snacks.

As she reached the front door of the building, she practically ran straight into Liam Bancroft, who was just walking out.

Sarah immediately pounced.

"Tomorrow night. My house. Dinner."

Liam wasn't the least bit surprised. "Let me guess. Your dad wants to formally interrogate his future son-in-law?"

"See? This is why I picked you. You're incredibly smart."

"I already have plans tomorrow night," Liam deadpanned.

Sarah knew he wasn't going to make this easy.

"Spit it out. What's it going to take?"

"Same terms as always," Liam smirked. "Talk to your best friend. Convince her to marry me the second her divorce papers clear."

This time, Sarah didn't even hesitate.

"Deal. I’ll start working my magic on her right now."

Liam stepped aside and held the door open like a gentleman.

"Right this way, Miss Sarah."

Sarah took two steps inside, then spun around.

"I didn't bring my car today. Wait for me? You can give me a ride home later."

"Sure."

Seeing that he was still standing outside, Sarah frowned. "Aren't you coming back up?"

"Nah, I already finished my inspection here. I've got another stop to make."

Sarah then remembered that Julian Vance also lived at The Astoria.

When Sarah let herself into the apartment, she found Jocelyn sitting up in bed, staring intensely at lines of code on her laptop screen.

"Hey, you."

Sarah dropped the bags and immediately pointed an accusatory finger at the screen.

"Didn't the doctor explicitly order you to rest? Why are you staring at a computer?"

"Lying down doing absolutely nothing is driving me insane," Jocelyn reasoned. "I just wanted to run through the architecture for the AI model one more time."

Sarah pulled a fresh bouquet of flowers from one of the bags and started arranging them in an empty vase.

"Did that absolute jerk Liam stop by to harass you again today?"

"Not really. He just poked his head in to check on me, stayed for five minutes, and left. You guys ran into each other?"

Meanwhile, a few floors away.

Liam punched in the passcode to Julian's penthouse and walked in like he owned the place.

Julian was sitting on his massive leather sofa, his laptop balanced on his knees, his eyes rapidly scanning an endless stream of complex program code.

Liam walked straight to the kitchen, grabbed a cold drink from the fridge, and strolled over.

"What are you looking at?"

"A massive gift Jocelyn just handed me," Julian replied without looking up.

Liam was instantly intrigued.

"A gift? What is it? Let me see!"

"You wouldn't understand a word of it."

Liam dramatically threw himself onto the opposite end of the sofa, lounging back.

"Then dumb it down and explain it to me."

Julian slowly closed the laptop.

"It's the proprietary architecture for a revolutionary aviation AI system. It's the exact project Adrian's company has been aggressively developing for the past three years. Jocelyn just handed me the master core data."

"I've been reviewing it. If my team finishes the build based on her algorithms, we can launch it within months. The second this AI hits the aviation market, Vanguard Tech won't just be competing... we will instantly become the undisputed king of the entire tech industry."