Alex bought his clothes off a street rack because they let him move, and he had never once cared what this city's money thought of that. He cared even less this morning, walking toward the Regent building with his hands in his pockets.

He didn't make it past the parking lot.

"Well. Look who's slumming it at a real company." Leon Rydell pitched it to carry, and it did — across the lot, off the glass, into every ear within fifty feet. He stood by the entrance with Julian Thorne on one side and Wilhelmina on the other, three people dressed like they'd rehearsed belonging somewhere they didn't.

"Leon." Alex kept walking. One word was already more than the man had earned.

"Careful." Julian's smile never touched anything below his mouth. "Last time we saw this one, he had opinions about who gets to speak in rooms he wasn't invited to." He tipped his head toward Wilhelmina. "This is the fiancé. The unemployed one."

"I remember," Wilhelmina said, the way you'd recall a stain on a carpet.

Heat crawled up the back of Alex's neck. Not for himself — he'd been called worse by better. For Febyella, whose money kept all three of them fed while they sneered at the man she'd chosen.

"I have a job," he said. "Funny thing, though. The way I remember it, you three are the unemployed ones. Living off my fiancée's money to keep your sorry lives running."

The words landed like a slap. Three faces, one shared flinch.

"Dock work isn't work." Wilhelmina recovered first. "It's animal work. We work here."

"Really." Alex raised an eyebrow and waited.

"We're here on job call" Leon lifted his chin like the sentence cost him something to produce. "Real job. Julian's got a man inside personnel — Wallace Crane. Guaranteed management placement, no résumé required, if you know how to grease the right hand." Pride crept into his voice, small and ugly. "My father already paid. Both our seats are as good as signed."

"Be kind to us, and maybe we'll help you get a job here too." Wilhelmina smiled. "Something like your old one. Animal work. Muscle."

Alex looked at her exactly as long as the sentence deserved.

"Good luck with that," he said — and meant it more than any of them would understand for the next twenty minutes.

Then he walked past them, past the front hall where guests were made to wait, and straight through the inner gate. The one reserved for employees and the kind of people who never need a badge.

The sensors didn't so much as blink.

Wilhelmina's laugh died in her throat. She marched after him — and the barrier caught her like a bouncer's arm. She stumbled back in front of a lobby full of watching eyes, heat flooding her face. "Is the scanner broken? How did he get in?"

"Relax." Leon smoothed his jacket. "He probably lifts boxes here. Or mops. First thing we do once we're hired - we get him fired."

"Good idea." Wilhelmina laughed again, steadier this time.

Twenty minutes. Nineteen, now.

Top floor of Regent Tower, Beatrix's office smelled like fresh toner and old money. She didn't offer Alex a chair. He took one anyway.

"Terms, since we're making it official." He sat. "I don't come to this building again unless something's actually broken. You run it. Every decision that matters is yours, and it looks like yours - because it is. My name goes on the shareholder filing and nowhere else. Not the letterhead. Not the press release. Not a birthday card."

"Understood." Beatrix didn't blink. "Announcements?"

"Two, when you are ready. First — ownership change. New chairman, name withheld by request. You step down to vice chairman. CEO stays yours." He paused half a second, the only pause he allowed himself all morning. "Second — Regent expands the tile grid across the entire city and state. Every district and state, not just the profitable ones. Two hundred million in advertising contracts, open to any firm in United State of Magic willing to bid. I'll provide the money. Don't worry about that part."

Her eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch, which for Beatrix was a full sentence. "That's not a small thing to bury under the first announcement."

"It's not supposed to stay buried." He didn't explain. Not yet.

"One more thing. Your compensation doubles, effective today. Not a gift — a correction. You ran this company alone for two years while your own family tried to sell it out from under you, and you never once let it show in a boardroom."

For the first time since he'd walked into her office four days ago, something in Beatrix's face actually moved. She reached for her pen before it could move any further. "I'll have the statements out in a few days."

"Is production giving the team any trouble?"

"None. Your formula sits right on top of our old product line - a few lines of the magic and everything runs. You could take the academy's most prestigious award if you ever published it."

"I love money more," Alex said. "One last thing. Does Regent hire on skill — or on relationships and cash up front? Because I met some people this morning who seem very sure it's the second one."

Beatrix sighed. "My uncle. He thought the company was sinking, so he squeezed money out of everything he could touch. Including job seats. Him and his people."

"I want them fired. Today. Can you do that?"

"I've wanted to for a long time." Beatrix smiled, the first real one he'd seen on her. "Let's do it now."

***

Thirty minutes later, two floors

down, Crane's office was empty. Not moved-out.empty. Abandoned empty. A coffee cup with a ring of cold liquid in the bottom. A drawer hanging open, contents gone the specific kind of gone that happens when a man packs in under an hour because someone upstairs started asking the right questions.

"He said today." Julian's confidence cracked down the middle. "He said we'd start work if we came in. He already took the money — a million dollars, two management seats-"

"He's gone." Wilhelmina's voice went flat, her fury already hunting for a target. "Julian. He is gone."

"My father's money-" Leon started, and stopped, because saying it out loud made

it real in a way it hadn't been thirty seconds ago.

Julian didn't take it quietly. He never

did. He grabbed the nearest

ет

assistant by the sleeve - a kid carrying someone else's coffee, who had nothing to do with any of it

and shouted foud enough for wo floors to hear. "Where did Crane go?"

"He he was fired. A few minutes ago."

That one word, fired, hit all three of them at once.

The man who arrived was broad and unhurried, with a badge that read Reeve. He

didn't ask twice. "Let go of my employee."

"Do you know who I am?" Julian's voice cracked upward, right past frightening and

into funny.

Reeve's hand moved once. Palm against cheek, flat and short, and the sound of it carried further than Julian's shouting ever had.

"No," Reeve said. "But someone upstairs asked me to throw you out."

His people had all three of them through the entrance inside a minute - dragged out like shoplifters, under every eye in the lobby. Wilhelmina's heels skidded on the marble. She screamed something about shame, the marble didn't care. Leon's face went a color no family portrait would ever want to capture.

His phone rang before he reached the curb. He knew the ringtone. He answered

anyway, because not answering Rael was its own kind of punishment.

"Tell me it's done." No greeting. No warmup. "Tell me you're standing in that building

with a manager's title at Regent Group. I paid a million dollars for that."

A million that wasn't even his. Everyone in the family knew it — Febyella's father's money, because none of them had a cent of their own.

"Dad-"

"Tell me a million dollars bought you a management chair and not a story you're about to tell me."

Leon didn't answer for three full seconds. That was answer enough. "Crane's gone. Fired. There's nothing here for us."

When Rael's voice came back, it had dropped into the register he saved for things that actually mattered to him. Colder than the yelling. Worse than the yelling. "You let a man walk off with my money, and you didn't even watch him do it."

"I didn't know—"

"Then what the hell do you know," Rael said, and hung up before Leon could find out whether that sentence had an end.

That same noon, across the city, Febyella's phone rang — and her heart nearly burst. An interview. Tomorrow.

When Alex came home, she was still smiling. She pressed the secret down and held

it there. Not yet. Not until she walked through Regent Group's doors herself.

"Something good happened." Alex smiled at her. "Want to share?"

"No." She almost did. The words made it all the way to her teeth — the first good

thing in four years, and she wanted to hand it to him like a gift. She swallowed them instead. "I'll jinx it. Just wait for the good news."

She knew her application hadn't even been complete. It shouldn't have earned a

callback at all.

But soon she'd have a job. That was what mattered.

Alex just smiled back — and said nothing either.