Chapter 579 | You’re Too Smart For Your Own Good

Chapter 579: 579 | You’re Too Smart For Your Own Good

We stood.

The hallway had emptied out. Somewhere down the corridor, Percy was giving his statement to Park in the same steady voice he used for everything, probably with a supporting document. Theo would go next, all uncomplicated warmth and nothing to hide.

Then Camille, who’d walk in and out without giving Park a single thing she didn’t already have. Then Petra, whose family name was now welded to my file in a way that meant she was, functionally, invested in my continued survival.

And then Felicity, whose warm, rapid-fire charm would hit Park like a weather system the Director hadn’t checked the forecast for. She’d walk out of that room leaving Park with the vague sense that Class 1-B was full of genuinely capable students who were also, somehow, personally invested in her having a nice afternoon. It was a gift. Felicity deployed it like breathing.

I had a lot of women in my life who were very good at their jobs. This was both my greatest operational asset and the exact mechanism through which I was going to die. Probably spectacularly. Possibly on camera.

We took the elevator down in silence. Diane’s phone was out before the doors closed, her thumb moving through a backlog of messages she’d ignored for the last ninety minutes. I watched her face shift as the outside world flooded back in. Victor Sterling had done something worth three texts. Margot Lang had called twice more, which meant Petra’s mother was now personally invested in whatever this was.

A client I didn’t recognize needed Diane before end of day, and the request had that specific urgency that meant someone’s approval rating had taken a hit they couldn’t explain yet.

The CEO was coming back online. The woman who’d cried into my shoulder two nights ago while confessing she still called Reina’s voicemail sometimes just to hear her voice was folding herself back into the version of Diane Fitzgerald who ran the highest-grossing hero PR firm in California and made it look easy.

I didn’t say anything about it. Some things you leave alone.

The garage was cold, and Diane’s Range Rover sat where she’d left it, matte grey and immaculate. She unlocked it and paused at the driver’s door.

"Lukas."

"Yeah."

"You handled Park well." She looked at me over the roof of the car, and for a second the CEO gave way to something quieter. "You went off script and I hated it and it worked. You handed her a better problem than the one she came for and you did it without me feeding you a single word."

Her mouth twisted. "Reina used to do that. Rewrite the whole room mid-sentence. Drove Marcus insane."

She’d said Reina’s name three times in two days. In nine years she’d said it maybe a dozen. I filed that somewhere I didn’t have language for yet.

"I had a good teacher," I said.

"You had two dead ones and a live one." She got in the car. "Don’t make me the sentimental one. It’s undignified."

Sloane climbed into the back with me instead of taking the front. Diane clocked it—her eyes flicked to the rearview, a single microsecond of Read the Room registering something she filed somewhere I’d probably hear about later—but she didn’t say anything.

The bond settled the second Sloane pressed against my side, warm and steady, the specific frequency of a girl who’d finally gotten the person she’d been afraid of losing into a moving vehicle headed somewhere she considered safe.

The Rover pulled out of the garage and into the grey light that Verano called morning when the marine layer decided to cooperate. Halloran shrank behind us, scaffolding and all, the dome with its hole still visible against the sky like someone had punched through the world’s most prestigious institution and gotten away with it.

"So," Sloane said quietly, once we were on the road and Diane had turned on Hero Sports Network at a volume that gave us cover. "Felicity."

"Sloane."

"I’m not mad." She was a little mad. The bond didn’t lie and I could feel the edge running underneath her words, the specific quality of someone who wanted to be reasonable about something that was costing her to be reasonable about. "I’m processing. There’s a difference."

"You sound like your mother."

"Don’t say that when I’m trying to be reasonable." She shifted position, tucking her legs up under her, pressing closer into my side like proximity helped with the processing.

Sloane was quiet for a while. Outside, the city started to appear through the windows, glass towers catching what little light broke through the clouds. The financial district rising out of the Corridor like someone had decided to build monuments to other people’s money. Somewhere down there, the Strand full of ranked Heroes and agency towers and sponsorship deals that moved more capital than most cities saw in a year.

Somewhere further out, eleven minutes away by highway, the Eastside where my parents had died buying time for a man who arrived ninety seconds too late to matter.

"I hate that it makes sense," Sloane said finally, her voice carrying the specific weight of someone who’d spent the last fifteen minutes working through an argument with herself and had lost. "The keep-everyone thing. I hate that I understand it. Because I’ve been doing the same math since I found out about my mom."

Her voice dropped, quieter now, the register shifting into something that sounded less like the Sloane who announced her opinions at full volume and more like the version who sat in the dark processing things she hadn’t figured out how to be loud about yet. "I decided I’d rather share you than lose you. And now this blonde disaster shows up with the same conclusion and I want to be angry at her for reaching it but I can’t, because I got there first and I know exactly how much it costs to swallow your pride and pick the version where you don’t get to have you all to yourself."

I looked at her. Pink hair coming loose from its tie, black choker tight against her throat, blue eyes fixed on the window like the city held an answer she was still working out.

"You’re too smart for your own good," I said.

"I know." She leaned her head on my shoulder, the weight of her settling against me with the specific ease of nine years and a bond that had stopped asking permission. "It’s exhausting."