PART 16:

Sophia answered nine of them directly. The other two she flagged for an in-person conversation, which told him something about how she thought. She knew which things needed the texture of a real exchange and which things could be resolved through a document. They met again on Wednesday in a smaller conference room on the 39th floor.

No view this time. An interior room, a table, a whiteboard with someone else’s agenda still partially visible. More honest in a way. Less staged. She was already there when he arrived, which he noted. She had a legal pad in front of her and a pen in her hand, not a tablet, which he was beginning to understand was a genuine preference rather than a performance.

“Question 10,” she said before he’d fully sat down. “You asked about operational authority. Specifically, you asked whether your threat assessments would be treated as advisory or binding. Yes. The honest answer is that it depends on the situation and I don’t want to give you a blanket answer that turns out to be false.

” She looked at him directly. “What I can tell you is that what happened at the Crown Meridian happened specifically because someone with better information than the people in authority was treated as advisory when he should have been treated as something closer to binding. I don’t intend to repeat that structure.

” “That’s not a policy,” he said. “That’s an intention.” “You’re right. Which is why I want to put it in the contract in language that has teeth.” She tapped her legal pad. “My lawyer had concerns about that. I told him the concerns were secondary to getting it right.” Ethan looked at her. “Your lawyer is going to hate working with me.

” “My lawyer hates working with anyone who actually knows what they want. He’ll manage.” He almost smiled. He didn’t quite, but it was close. “Question 11,” she said, “You asked about notification when my schedule changes in ways that affect the threat environment. What specifically were you asking?” “I need 24 hours notice minimum for venue changes.

12 hours is workable in genuine emergencies. Anything less than that means I’m reacting instead of preparing, and reacting is where things go wrong.” “What counts as a genuine emergency?” “Your judgment on that, not mine. But I need you to use it honestly and not as a convenience.” She was quiet for a moment, writing something on the legal pad.

“That’s fair?” she said. “It is.” She wrote something else. He waited. “There’s something I want to say that isn’t in the contract,” she said without looking up from the pad. “Okay.” She looked up. “I have a habit of assuming I’m the smartest person in any given room about things that fall within my expertise, finance, capital allocation, risk modeling in a business context.

I’m usually right about that, and I know it, and I don’t apologize for it.” She paused. “In the area of physical security and threat assessment, I am not the smartest person in any room you’re also in. I don’t know how to turn off the instinct to second-guess people, but I want you to know that I’m aware of it. And if I second-guess you on something that matters, I want you to tell me directly.

” He looked at her. “You want me to push back on you?” “I want you to say what needs to be said regardless of how it lands.” “Most people don’t actually want that.” “I know.” “I’m trying to be an exception.” He believed her. Not completely. People who said they wanted to be challenged frequently discovered, in the moment, that they wanted to be challenged only when it was comfortable.

But he believed she meant it now, in this room, and that was more than most people offered. “I can do that,” he said. She nodded and returned to her legal pad. They spent the next 90 minutes going through the remaining details. Travel protocol, communication hierarchy, the specific question of how his role would interface with Marcus Callaway’s existing team.

A conversation that had more complexity in it than either of them pretended otherwise. Callaway was good at his job in most respects, had 11 years of experience in protective services, and had made one very bad call in a high-pressure moment. Ethan had no interest in dismantling him. He had interest in building a structure that used Callaway’s strengths while accounting for the gap that Tuesday had exposed.

“He’s going to have trouble reporting to someone he physically tackled,” Sophia said, with a bluntness that he appreciated. “Probably. That’s a management problem, not a security problem. I can work with it if you can.” “I’ll talk to him.” “Let me talk to him first.” She paused. “Why?” “Because if you talk to him first, it becomes about what you want.

If I talk to him first, it’s a conversation between two professionals about how to make a structure work. That’s more likely to stick.” She considered this. “All right.” He was aware throughout the meeting of the particular quality of a negotiation that was unusual in his experience. He’d negotiated his role at Draylen twice, for the initial hire and for the senior position, and both times it had been a transaction.

This was something else. Not a transaction, two people trying to build something that had to work under pressure, which required a level of honesty that normal transactions didn’t. He wasn’t sure what to call it, but it felt like the right foundation for something. He told the Crown Meridian on Thursday. Carol Huang took it with the grace of someone who had been expecting it and had prepared herself accordingly.

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