Page 26 of My Unexpected Surprise
By rooms full of people who looked at me as a spoiled rich brat and expected either more or less than I was.
I’ve gotten quite good at walking into rooms that aren't sure about me yet.
"Livia De Luca," I say to the floor generally, before Valentino can do the formal version.
"I'm starting in compliance strategy. I'm very good at finding gaps in systems and very annoying about naming them out loud. I'm told this is a feature rather than a bug."
I look around. "Please tell me who makes the coffee on this floor and whether it's good."
It's silent for a beat.
Then someone in the second row, young, dark-haired, wearing a slightly amused expression, speaks, "Marcus. And it depends on whether Marcus likes you." She points at a blank-faced, glasses-wearing young man in front of her.
"Marcus," I say, looking at him. "I like strong coffee, so I’ll absolutely cover for you if you need to leave early, and I brought biscuits from the place on Aldgate Street.”
I produce the tin from my bag.
Marcus's expression decides to be amused.
Valentino, at the edge of the room, says nothing. But when I glance at him just briefly, something in his face has shifted, marginally, into an expression I cannot quite classify.
It's neither displeasure nor approval, but something that is specifically neither.
I put the tin on the nearest desk and follow him back to the conference room.
He sets me up in the corner of conference room B with the full Aurelius briefing archive. Six months of preparation documents, competitor analysis, client testimonial framework.
He tells me to find the gaps.
I sit down, open my laptop, and pull up the Aurelius files he's already shared to my access.
This is, genuinely, my favorite kind of work.
Twelve family offices. Multi-generational. The brief is thorough. Financial structures, principal family trees, recent succession activity. A threat matrix for each. It's meticulous work. I can feel the intelligence behind it.
But something's missing.
I read through for forty minutes before he appears at the side of my desk.
"First impressions?" He inquires.
"The risk architecture is sound. The mapping of internal fracture points is precise." I pause. "But the language is wrong. I think I mentioned this earlier. We need to work on our emotional language."
He waits.
"These families are going to read this and feel like they're being autopsied." I turn my screen toward him slightly. "You've identified every point of vulnerability as a threat vector. A daughter's recent divorce listed under volatility indicators. A patriarch's declining health listed under succession risk multipliers."
I look up at him. "These are people's lives."
"They are also risk variables."
"That's my point."
He pulls the screen back toward him to read, and for a moment he's close. Too close. He leans across me to scroll down. His hand is near my shoulder, not touching, but he might as well be.
My skin prickles from awareness I don't dare investigate right now. He's my boss, I repeat over and over in my head to shove memories of that night down.
That's about as effective as wearing a clown costume to a gun fight.
