The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism novel Chapter 417

Chapter 417: 417 | Your Indemnity Language is Decorative

Four percent. She had told me four percent, out loud, in front of two other women, and I was starting to suspect the number was a courtesy.

"Ms. Reyes."

Petra’s voice, and it had lost some of the policy-recitation flatness. Odette turned her head.

"You’re taking my proposal and improving it," Petra said. "That is fine. That is what I hoped would happen when I opened it. But you have removed the part that mattered to me, and I would like it back."

"Which part."

"The part where I am a signatory."

Diane made a small sound.

"Honey," she said, "no."

"Ms. Fitzgerald, with respect, this does not require your consent."

"It requires more than my consent, it requires you to have thought about it for longer than four days." Diane turned in her chair to face her fully, and there is a version of Diane Fitzgerald that is professionally warm and there is a version that is just warm, and this was the second one, which made it considerably worse. "You put your name on that instrument as a signatory and you are personally attached to his registration for the length of your career. Not your family’s name. Yours. Every performance review, every ranking board, every journalist with a slow news week. If he turns out to be exactly what he says he is, nobody remembers you signed. If he turns out to be anything else, that document is the first thing anybody finds, and you’ll be twenty-six years old explaining it in a room where nobody in it likes you."

"I’m aware."

"You’re nineteen."

"I am eighteen, and I have been aware of exactly how much my name is worth since I was nine years old, which is a thing you cannot say about yourself at that age and I do not resent you for it." Petra’s ears had gone completely red and her voice had not moved at all, which was frankly an impressive piece of engineering. "My mother’s name is on eleven federal contracts. Mine is on nothing. I have won one election by one vote and I have never made a single decision that would have gone differently if I had not existed."

Nobody said anything.

I have watched Petra Lang for three weeks. I have watched her descend a staircase like the room was rented for her, and correct Maribelle’s hemline every morning with the reliability of a public utility, and generate a crystalline arsenal that orbited her head while she looked at all twenty of us like we were furniture arriving late. I had her filed under one thing and the file was wrong, and it had been wrong since the second she said saving lives is the job in the top row of Room 214 and did not gloat about being right.

"That’s a hell of a thing to say out loud," Diane said quietly.

"I have found that saying things out loud is how they become other people’s problem." Petra opened the second folio, and there was a second sheet in it, and her handwriting was on it. "I drafted mine Wednesday night as well."

Odette laughed.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify