Chapter 309 Cancel.

Chapter 309: 309 Cancel.

The wheels against Jester were finally in motion, but there was one other major player I was aggressively looking to recruit into this suicidal business.

One specific person who might be invaluable in facing down the reality-warping, magical bullshit Jester brought to the table.

Namely, his estranged daughter.

Who absolutely, fundamentally hated him.

Which is pretty much par for the course with these legacy super-families.

I’d been surviving in this industry for a long time, and one of the core demographic rules I learned early on is that every single major super-group or bloodline has a designated black sheep.

A high-profile league of villains inevitably produces a few kids who go rogue and become registered heroes, especially if they get popular enough in the media to successfully spin off their own lucrative solo brands.

Conversely, a squeaky-clean group of A-list heroes always has that one edgy member who flip-flops into outright villainy or violent moral grayness, usually for the exact same market-driven reasons.

You always had a Wolverine. Or a Scarlet Witch. Or whatever the current seasonal flavor of anti-hero was.

In this corporate industry, if you simply couldn’t cut it as a smiling, marketable hero, you pivoted and rebranded as the bad guy.

Or, at the very least, a brooding anti-villain with a high body count and a tragic backstory.

Surprisingly enough, Vanessa actually wasn’t one of those calculated, PR-driven brand pivots.

It certainly helped that Vanessa had some serious, heavy-hitting magical power backing her up, and also that Mystic herself had actively recruited her fairly early on to teach her the strict, survivalist ropes of A-list heroing.

And after successfully working a high-risk job with her not so long ago—and sleeping with her a very long time ago—I fortunately still had her number.

I gave her a call first thing in the morning.

It rang five long, agonizing times. I paced aggressively around the chalet’s kitchen island, a steaming cup of black coffee in my hand, until she finally picked up the line.

"Mitchell," she growled, using my real name like it was a curse word. "What the hell do you want?"

"Gee, good morning to you too. To talk."

"I have absolutely nothing to say to you."

"Not even if I have news about daddy dearest’s latest dirty trick?"

There was a pause on the line. I waited, sweating a bit with anticipation, until finally, a heavy sigh came through the speaker.

"Where exactly do you want to meet?"

I blinked, genuinely surprised. In person? interesting. But from a standpoint, that would definitely work better.

"How about Hero’s Slice? We both know the place."

"Fine. I’ll be there in exactly half an hour. And this better not be a fucking trap, Miles."

"Cross my heart and hope to die," I said smoothly.

"We’ll see about that," she warned darkly, and hung up with a sharp, definitive click.

I sighed with massive relief and tucked the phone away. Alright. Genuine progress.

Sure, she sounded like she was fully prepared to bite my head off the absolute second I stepped through the pizzeria door, but hey!

I was incredibly used to dealing with heavily armed, openly hostile women. And she was actually agreeing to the meeting. Things were officially moving. But I didn’t have very long before this entire powder keg came to a head.

I grabbed the keys to the unassuming Crown out of the garage, and hit the coastal highway a few minutes later.

I was aggressively focused on the upcoming negotiation when, barely five miles down the road, the Bluetooth system on the dashboard suddenly chimed with an incoming priority call.

Oh, hell. Was Vanessa already canceling on me? I hit the receiver button on the steering wheel, keeping my eyes locked on the morning traffic. "Hello?"

"Miles, hello there!"

"Lacey?" I said, my brow furrowing instantly. "What exactly is it?"

"Do you happen to have a quick minute?" she purred, her voice carrying that sickeningly smooth, corporate-shark cadence.

"Not really. I’m actually—"

"Fantastic. It’s strictly regarding your contract and everything."

I let out a heavy sigh, shifting lanes. "Alright. What about it? Do you need some last-minute changes to the deal?"

"Something exactly like that, yes, Miles. You see, we at Firefly Industries firmly believe that we’ll be actively looking to go in an... entirely different direction for this upcoming quarter."

Oh.

I really, really didn’t like the sound of that.

"What kind of direction, exactly?" I asked, my grip tightening on the steering wheel.

"A lateral one. We firmly believe that, given current, highly volatile market trends, we may want to aggressively utilize our in-house resources for the current position where we had originally subcontracted you and your villainesses to serve a role that is, quite frankly, no longer required for our brand synergy."

"Hold on," I said, my brain working in overdrive to rapidly translate her weaponized corporate jargon. "Are you actively firing my league?"

"Miles, Miles! Please, let’s remain professional. There is absolutely no firing going on here today. We at Firefly have merely realized, through rigorous internal analytics, that we’d like to actively explore some completely different strategic options compared to our earlier agreed-upon parameters."

"So you’re officially canceling the signed contract," I said flatly.

"I didn’t explicitly say that."

"Do we currently still have a contract?"

"No."

I slammed a fist against the steering wheel. Dammit! "Is this sudden ’restructure’ directly because of what happened with No Whey yesterday?" I demanded.

"We take a wide, comprehensive variety of socio-economic factors into consideration when managing our hero portfolios," Lacey rattled off blithely, sounding like she was reading directly from a heavily vetted legal script.

I groaned out loud, my head falling back against the headrest. I fucking knew it! Son of a bitch.

"Lacey, listen to me," I said, knowing full well it was completely futile, but likewise knowing I absolutely had to try to salvage the massive payday. "Glacia absolutely did not do what that video made it look like. It is a deep-faked setup. I swear to you on my life."

"Miles, please. Firefly Industries makes absolutely no snap-judgment decisions regarding our independent contractors, I assure you."

"The hell you don’t," I snapped, my voice rising with sheer, unadulterated frustration. "Four months ago, a middle manager in your own department shared a completely harmless frog meme on his private, locked social media account, complaining about getting rear-ended in traffic by a handicap-accessible bus.

"And when the internet randomly dragged him for perceived ableism, he was fired and blacklisted the next morning!"

"We naturally promote a vibrant, inclusive diversity of ideas and thought at our core businesses, but there is absolutely no place for hate or brand dilution in the Firefly family," Lacey recited flawlessly, her tone completely devoid of human empathy.

I brutally bit the inside of my cheek to resist the overwhelming urge to punch the steering wheel again.

Knowing the force I could generate, I might accidentally snap the steering column right off the dashboard.

"Damn it, Lacey. Three days," I growled, my voice dropping into a cold, dangerous register. "Just give me three goddamn days, and I will personally settle this entire thing.

"I will hand you the real culprits on a silver platter, or I’ll be completely dead. Either way, your corporate PR problem is permanently solved. Can you buy me just three days of before you officially do anything."