Page 27 of My Unexpected Surprise
I clear my throat and fix my eyes on the screen.
He straightens after a moment and I slowly pull in a much-needed breath, blinking a few times to focus.
He's already looking at me when I glance up.
I don't know how long he was looking before that.
"The language is precise," he murmurs, "because it needs to be. Emotional language introduces subjective interpretation. Subjective interpretation creates gaps."
"Emotional language is what makes clients trust you."
"My clients trust results."
"Your prospective clients," I say carefully, "are twelve family offices evaluating whether to hand you the most intimate details of their lives. You need them to trust you before there are results." I hold his gaze. "A threat grid doesn't do that. A narrative does."
Something in his jaw tightens.
A chair scrapes somewhere. Someone's pen falls down.
He looks at me for a long moment.
"You have until Thursday," he says, "to show me what that looks like in practice. A revised framing for two of the family profiles. Keep every data point. Change nothing structural."
He picks up a file from my desk and sets it back down with the small precision of someone who moves things exactly where they mean to. "Then I'll decide if you have a point."
He walks away.
I turn back to my screen and breathe out slowly through my nose. I work until four-thirty, when Valentino appears in the doorway.
"We're running the presentation prep this evening. I need you in the room."
I look up from the archive.
The evening. Right.
I do a rapid internal calculation. Piper's availability, Nico's dinner, his bedtime, the forty-minute commute back to our end of the city.
"What time?" I ask.
"Six. Runs until we're done."
"How long is until we're done?"
"However long it takes."
I close the folder. "I can't do this evening."
He looks at me and from his eyes, I get the distinct impression that he's not used to hearing the wordcan't. "I need the compliance perspective in the room."
"I understand that. I can have written notes to you by five-thirty that cover everything I've flagged this afternoon. I can be available by phone—"
"Ms. De Luca." He steps into the room, and his voice doesn't rise, it never rises, it simply becomes more precisely itself. I don't know how else to describe it, but the hairs on the back of my neck rise up.
That long look returns and I almost squirm. My son’s face rises in my mind. The small apartment. The need to keep this job.
"This is a first-week priority. The evaluation is in six weeks. I don't run prep sessions by phone," he asserts, coming to stand directly in front of me, forcing me to look up.
"I know." I hold his gaze. "But I have a childcare commitment. I can't move on this kind of notice."
