The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 415

Chapter 415: 415 | He’s a Portfolio Position, Honey

I was already congratulating myself, which is my documented failure mode, and I was still doing it when Petra Lang closed her planner.

The sound it made was small. Leather against leather, one soft clap, and both older women turned toward it like a starting pistol had gone off.

"Ms. Reyes," Petra said. "Before this concludes."

"Petra."

"Before this concludes, I would like to correct the frame." Petra’s spine was straight and her hands were folded and her voice had gone into the register she used for reciting policy numbers. "You are treating this as a compliance risk that requires containment. That is my mother’s framing, and it is incomplete."

I turned my head very slowly.

We had a plan. The plan had three parts. The plan had been agreed to on a concrete path at eight nineteen on a Wednesday night with her hand in mine for nine seconds, or twelve, depending on who was counting. Nowhere in the plan did Petra Lang open her own file.

She had a file. She had a second folio under the planner, and I had watched her sit at that table for twenty-five minutes without ever mentioning it.

"Continue," Odette said.

"Halloran’s Combat Operations track is currently assessing him at approximately sixty percent of demonstrated capability, which every instructor in the wing has independently noticed and none of them have escalated. Cole Dravid has an open observation file. Imara Steele has an informal one. Radiant reviewed his practical footage and made a personnel note that nobody in this building has been permitted to read." Petra’s emerald eyes came up and they were absolutely steady. "Four members of faculty have concluded that he is more than his classification and all four of them have decided independently to say nothing. That is not a compliance risk, Ms. Reyes. That is an institutional consensus that the risk is worth carrying, and no agency in California currently has a position in it."

The temperature in the conference room changed. Not dropped. Changed.

Diane set her coffee down and did not pick it back up.

"Petra," she said, and the sugar was gone out of her voice entirely.

"I am aware of what I am doing, Ms. Fitzgerald."

"I don’t think you are."

"My mother sent Odette to determine whether I was compromised." Petra did not raise her volume, and she did not look at me, and her ears were the color of her name. "I am giving Odette something better to bring home. Lang Industries holds equipment contracts with eleven agencies and three federal offices. Lang Agency has no first-year position at Halloran this cycle because my mother considers the current cohort weak. If the Lang name appears beside his registration as an early developmental partner rather than an inquiring party, the inquiry closes, the secondary verification never regenerates, and my mother stops asking why her daughter mentions a scholarship student four times in one phone call."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Odette Reyes took off her glasses again, folded them, and looked at Petra for a long, unhurried span of time that would have made a lesser person start explaining themselves.

Petra did not explain herself. She sat there with her ears burning and her jaw set and let it be looked at.

"You want an observation agreement," Odette said.

"I want the file closed and the name attached. Those are the same instrument."

"And you’d like your mother to hear that her daughter negotiated it."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify