Page 13 of My Unexpected Surprise
“I left his world five years ago,” she says quietly.
“I know that.”
Her eyes snap to me. “I don’t owe him loyalty. I have a son to feed and a life I built without his money or his name. If you think I’d crawl back to him for anything short of the apocalypse, you haven’t done your homework as well as you think.”
I raise a brow at the fire, mentally filing another detail: a son.
I hold her gaze for a moment. Then: "Alright. Walk me through your plan for Ferretti Global Risk."
She wastes no time, doing so without using the wordssynergyorecosystemorholistic approach,which tells me she actually knows what she's talking about rather than having read a whitepaper about it.
She identifies three specific structural vulnerabilities in our client communication chain, proposes a framework I haven't heard articulated that way before, and does it all in under four minutes without notes.
I ask three questions. She answers two precisely and tells me she doesn't have enough internal data to answer the third yet, which is a better answer than the fabricated confidence most candidates offer.
When she finishes, her eyes are bright with passion. Or desperation.
She needs this job. That much is clear.
My mind goes back to the Aurelius contract. About the evaluation period beginning in six weeks and the compliance review the Consortium's representatives will conduct.
And about Dominic Calder, their sharp-eyed crisis consultant, who will find every gap in our operation and document it with cheerful thoroughness.
It's risky. Having Dante's daughter in my firm.
But I need someone who knows what they're doing. And from the sounds of it…
“Fine. You're hired.”
Her eyes snap to mine in surprise. “Seriously?”
“Do I look unserious to you, Ms. De Luca?”
Her eyes water, but she blinks it back, forcing herself to stay in control. She clears her throat. “Okay.”
"You report directly to me. On everything."
"Directly to you," she echoes. I watch her throat work around a swallow, the delicate line of her neck drawing my attention for half a second longer than it should.
"Yes, Livia. Come straight to me for everything. You start Monday. HR will have the contract and full NDA packet ready by end of day.”
She bends to retrieve her heels and slides them back on.
And wordlessly, she leaves.
As the door closes behind her, my thoughts finally start to settle.
A part of me finds the fact that I gave a job this delicate to Dante's daughter profoundly illogical. But another part of me knows she's the one I'm looking for.
And it's for reasons beyond this contract I'm seeking.
I have a son,her tired voice keeps echoing in my head.
There's a version of this company that existed before it had a name. Before the offices and infrastructure.
Before two hundred and forty-three people would clock in every day to carry work that once belonged to me and, later on, to a handful of people trying to make themselves useful with their peculiar skillsets.
I think about this sometimes. Not often. But when the building is quiet and I'm the last one on the floor, I think about how it started with Vaughn.
