Chapter 250 Focused.

Chapter 250: 250 Focused.

"What a terrible waste of prime talent that would be."

I tensed instantly. The casual, relaxed posture I had been leaning on completely evaporated. I locked my eyes onto her mirrored lenses.

"How do you know about that contract?"

"Knowledge is the ultimate corporate currency, Miles," Lacey said, completely unbothered by my sudden shift in tone. "And I happen to be incredibly wealthy. Besides," she added, tilting her head coyly as her smirk widened. "I actively want to keep you breathing. I think your little independent operation could be an incredibly useful asset to have around the ecosystem."

"Oh, do you?"

"Of course," Lacey said smoothly. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find competent villains these days?"

My mind instantly flashed back to the absolute circus of delusional freaks, unstable brawlers, and literal demons that had been knocking on my front door all week. "I have a rough idea, yeah."

"Exactly," Lacey said, gesturing with an impeccably manicured hand. "There is always a surplus of violent sociopaths. But it is agonizingly hard to find a reliable heel willing to work within a confined, heavily structured narrative. A guaranteed bad guy who actually understands the business model and is willing to play the game without breaking the toys."

"What about Firefly’s in-house rogue gallery?" I asked.

"Outstanding individuals, of course," Lacey replied smoothly. "True experts in the craft of theatrical villainy. But Firefly specializes in hero representation for a reason.

"Our roster of villains is already spread incredibly thin providing menaces for our top-tier heroes.

"The talent pool for reliable, punctual, and driven antagonists who won’t accidentally murder a client or commit a massive PR disaster on live television is incredibly shallow. And training new villains from scratch is a massive financial liability that rarely pans out."

She paused, leaning forward just a fraction. "It is far better for my quarterly margins if someone else were willing to... take on that heavy administrative burden."

I stared at her, putting the pieces together.

"Wait," I said slowly. "Hold on. Are you telling me you want my league to succeed so you can use us as a free farm system? You want me to do the heavy lifting, filter out the psychos, train the professionals, and then you’re going to poach my reliable bad guys?"

"I consider it a ringing endorsement of your excellent management skills," Lacey said without missing a beat.

I could only shake my head, genuinely impressed. "You are one ruthless, cold-blooded operator."

"Only during business hours," Lacey said, flashing another devastating, shark-like smile.

She coyly reached up to her collar. With a practiced, deliberate motion, she slipped the top button of her tailored blouse free. Then the second. The fabric parted just enough to reveal the expensive lace beneath. It was a highly calculated, aggressive distraction tactic.

I had to admit, the visual presentation was certainly appealing, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I let out a dry chuckle.

"Nice try, Lacey. But I’m not letting you stall me in here with a cheap burlesque routine while your plastic secretary finishes pitching a predatory thirty-year contract to the kid out in the hallway."

Lacey sighed, the seductive corporate predator act dropping instantly. She casually fastened her buttons back up, looking mildly disappointed but entirely unashamed. "You know my playbook entirely too well, Miles. Oh well. Can we expect to see you at the Intergate Arms facility for the walkthrough?"

"I’ll be there to scope the floor plan," I said, turning toward the heavy frosted doors.

"Excellent," Lacey said to my back. "I look forward to the production."

We’d see about that.

I left her standing in the executive office and stepped back out into the reception area. I found Vanessa standing near the sleek desk, clutching a massive stack of glossy pamphlets and promotional folders against her chest like a physical shield.

Brick was still standing over her, rigidly reciting the unmatched virtues of Firefly’s hero-acceleration program in a perfectly modulated, synthetic voice.

"Time to go," I announced, cutting the secretary off mid-sentence.

Absolute, unadulterated relief painted Vanessa’s face. She didn’t say a word to the guys—she just turned and quickly followed me back down the carpeted hallway toward the elevators.

Once the steel doors slid shut, sealing us inside the quiet, descending car, Vanessa let out a massive, shuddering breath. She sagged against the metal railing, looking entirely drained.

"You held your ground pretty well in there," I told her, watching the floor numbers tick down on the digital display.

"Thanks," she muttered reluctantly. She looked down at the massive stack of heavily branded paperwork shoved into her arms with a look of deep wonderment. "This is all so... bizarre. I thought fighting monsters was exhausting."

"I warned you," I said, leaning back against the elevator wall. "Look, you don’t have to do any of it. Plenty of heroes stay independent and refuse to affiliate with the major corporate conglomerates. There are massive perks to signing a deal, sure. But the downsides are heavy.

"Think incredibly carefully about what you want your career to look like, and read every single comma before you sign your name on a dotted line. They will absolutely try to slip a buried clause into the contract that gives them the rights to your DNA."

"I suppose," Vanessa said as the elevator reached the ground floor. We stepped out, making our way across the gleaming, sterile expanse of the lobby. "But she did make some incredibly valid points about the logistics..."

"She is a professional manipulator. Being convincing is her actual superpower," I said, pushing through the revolving glass doors and stepping back out into the afternoon air. "And like I said, there are legitimate benefits. Just keep your guard up."

Vanessa frowned. She stopped on the concrete plaza, giving me a long, narrow, sideways glance.

"You do this kind of thing often, then?" she asked.

I shrugged, unlocking the Cruiser with my fob. "It pays the mortgage."

She just stared at me for a long moment, her lips pressing into a tight, thoughtful line. "You are a deeply strange man."

"I am?"

"Yes. You are completely unlike any other villain I have ever encountered," she said, her voice carrying a genuine, searching curiosity. "You have absolutely no ambition to conquer the world. You have no grand, dedicated nemesis with whom you struggle.

"You possess no master plot to increase your personal power through mass theft or murder. You are not addicted to evil, and you take zero pleasure in causing innocent pain. Why do you even do this? Why be a villain at all?"

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by the question. For a kid like Vanessa, who had lived her entire life surrounded by some of the most heinous, megalomaniacal psychopaths on the planet, a blue-collar villain who willingly took a dive for a paycheck didn’t track with her worldview.

She reminded me a lot of Glacia, just launched on an entirely different trajectory.

While Glacia had looked at it and decided she wanted to be a pragmatic, operational professional like me, Vanessa had looked at the exact same world, rejected the entire premise, and swung violently in the opposite direction.

I couldn’t exactly blame her. When your father regularly threatens to sink continents and likely tortures orphans just to use their tears as a cocktail mixer, something in your brain was bound to snap.

I leaned against the hood of my car and shrugged. "Well, I happen to enjoy the work, first of all."

"You enjoy being evil?" she demanded, her guard instantly going back up.

"No. Not at all. I don’t enjoy evil, and I don’t practice it," I corrected her calmly. "But I love the lifestyle."

"The lifestyle?" Vanessa repeated, her brow furrowing in deep puzzlement.

"Yeah. Look, the hero gets the applause, the key to the city, and that wonderful, intoxicating feeling of smug moral superiority. But as the villain? You get to do all the genuinely fun stuff. You get to deliver massive, theatrical monologues.

"You get to concoct elaborate, complicated schemes of grand larceny. You get to hire a dedicated horde of matching henchmen, build massive underground monuments to your own ego, and put your logo on everything. It’s fantastic. Plus, the overall aesthetic is completely undefeated."

"I suppose," Vanessa said slowly, though she didn’t sound wholly convinced by my architectural argument.

"And besides all the fun stuff, heroes fundamentally need villains," I added, my tone turning a shade more serious. "Think about it logically. What do you honestly think would happen if all those highly stressed people who can fly, bend steel, and shoot lasers out of their eyes suddenly didn’t have an obviously evil bad guy to punch?"

Vanessa blinked. "They would protect the innocent from natural disasters and systemic issues."

"No, they wouldn’t. They would be at each other’s throats in a week," I told her bluntly.

"You give the hero community far too little credit," Vanessa argued, crossing her arms defensively.

I shrugged. "Maybe. But people will always find a reason to argue about the most pointlessly petty, territorial things. It is basic human nature. Now, give those exact same petty humans godlike, unchecked power, massive public egos, and absolutely no unified threat to keep them focused..."