CHAPTER 3: VANCE INDUSTRIES
1342 Words
"Sit," Julian said, not looking up from the folder on his desk. "Let's see if the recommendation was worth the paper it was printed on."
"Good morning to you too."
"I don't do mornings. I do results."
Vance Industries was the human-facing company that quietly funded and shielded the hidden wolf world from outside eyes, and Julian Vance ran it the way he apparently ran everything, cold, precise, and without a single wasted word. The Five had placed me here as a cover job, somewhere ordinary enough that no one hunting a missing heir would think to look. I sat anyway. Storming out in my first hour wasn't exactly the quiet arrangement they'd promised me. "Then let's get to the results."
He looked up. It was the kind of look that catalogued a person in half a second, height, posture, the exact way I'd chosen to sit. Precise. Efficient. The kind of attention that missed nothing and wasted nothing.
"Your file is efficient," he said. "It doesn't say capable under pressure."
"Files rarely do."
"So prove it."
"You could trust the recommendation."
"I don't trust what I haven't tested myself."
He slid a stack of papers across the desk, dense, technical. "Summarize that. Thirty seconds. Aloud. Now."
I didn't hesitate. I scanned the first page, the second, pulled the shape of it fast, spoke before the nerves could catch up to my mouth. When I finished, the silence stretched half a second too long.
"Faster than my last three assistants combined," he said, like it irritated him.
"Should I apologize?"
"No. It means you might be useful."
"High praise."
"I don't give praise. I have expectations."
"Comforting."
He didn't smile. Men like him rarely did. He leaned back, studying me the way you study a variable you haven't fully solved for yet.
"One more," he said, sliding a second sheet across, numbers with no context attached. "Tell me what's wrong."
I looked for exactly three seconds. "The totals don't match the line items. Someone's skimming, or someone made an error they're hoping goes unchecked."
"Which."
"I don't know your company well enough to say."
"But you'd find out."
"Given the opportunity."
"Good answer." He set the sheet aside like it had already served its purpose. "Most people guess. You didn't guess."
"I don't like guessing."
"Neither do I."
He studied me another moment before speaking again. "Three questions remain in most interviews. I only ask one. Are you willing to work hours that won't be explained to you in advance.?
"Yes."
"Are you willing to keep confident you won't fully understand the weight of."
"Yes."
"And are you willing to be wrong about the people around you, sometimes for months, before you learn the truth about them."
The question landed strangely specific for a job interview. "That's an unusual thing to ask an assistant."
"I ask unusual questions. Answer it."
"Yes," I said. "If the truth is worth waiting for."
"It usually is."
He closed the folder entirely, which felt significant, though I couldn't have said why. "Do you know what this company does, Miss Carter?"
"Investments. Holdings. The posting was vague. I assume intentionally."
"Everything worth protecting is vague by design. We manage interests that don't survive being visible. That means the people who work for me stay comfortable with things remaining unexplained. Can you manage that."
"I've had practice."
"I imagine you have."
The line sat somewhere between a compliment and an accusation, and I didn't know which to brace for.
"One question," he said. "Hypothetically. If someone you trusted had lied to you for years, in the name of your own good, would you rather they kept lying, or told you the truth even if it dismantled everything you believed you understood."
The question landed too close to home to be hypothetical.
"The truth," I said. "Every time. Even if it burns the whole thing down."
"Even me."
"I don't know you well enough for that to mean anything yet."
"Fair."
"Tell me about yourself," he said next. "Not the resume version."
"Why would I give you the honest version? You're my employer, not my therapist."
"Humor me."
"I prefer things I can control," I said carefully. "I don't like being managed. I don't like being told what I can't know."
Something moved behind his eyes, too fast to name, gone before I could be certain it had been there at all.
"Interesting," he said. "That's a specific complaint for someone who has never worked in an office."
My stomach dropped, quiet and cold. "I never said that."
"Your file didn't say it either." His gaze held, steady, deliberate. "I noticed regardless."
"Notice how."
"You scanned this room the moment you walked in. Exit first. Then me. Most new hires look at the desk." He tilted his head. "You also sat with your back to the wall instead of the window. That's not an instinct people learn behind a desk. And your hands stayed loose at your sides the entire time, never in your lap, never folded. That's not comfortable. That's readyness."
"Maybe I like knowing where the door is."
"Maybe."
He didn't sound convinced, and worse, didn't sound like he needed to be.
A woman knocked, stepped halfway in, some update about a call on line two. Julian waved her off without breaking eye contact. "Reschedule it."
"He's called twice already."
"I said reschedule it."
She left without another word. The door clicked shut, and the room felt smaller with only the two of us in it, the air tighter.
"You dismissed a call for this," I said.
"I dismiss a great deal that doesn't matter."
"And I matter."
"You're new. I prefer to know what I'm working with."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting this morning."
"You say that often. Not an answer."
"Then perhaps you keep asking the wrong questions."
"Or you're simply skilled at avoiding the right ones."
Something crossed his face, brief, almost involuntary, gone before it could settle into anything warmer. "You'll be in trouble, Miss Carter."
"You hired me regardless."
"I haven't decided that yet."
"You just called me in trouble and rescheduled a call in the next five minutes. Which one is the real assessment."
"Both. They're not mutually exclusive."
"Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
"I don't do anything reassuring. I am accurate."
"Accurate, then. Tell me something accurate about why you keep testing me instead of simply telling me what you actually want from this job."
"Because the version of you that answers under pressure is more useful to me than the version that gives a rehearsed answer."
"Are we finished," I asked, standing before he could answer, needing distance from whatever this was.
"For now." He didn't stand. He watched me gather my bag, unbothered, as though he already knew I'd return tomorrow whether I wanted to or not. "Welcome to Vance Industries, Miss Carter."
The name landed strange, my own alias sounding almost wrong in his mouth, though I couldn't have said why.
I made it to the door before his voice stopped me cold.
"Ivy Sinclair."
I froze, hand on the handle, every muscle locking at once.
I had given this company exactly one name when I signed my contract, and it wasn't that one. Nobody at Vance Industries knew that name. Nobody outside the safehouse walls was permitted to know that name at all, not the Council, not the rogue packs, not one soul who hadn't been bound by blood to guard it. My entire life had been constructed around the certainty that those two words never appeared in the same room as each other in front of a stranger.
I turned slowly. My heart slammed loud enough that I was certain he could hear it from across the room, my palms damp against the strap of my bag.
"What did you just call me?"
Julian didn't blink. He looked nothing like a man who had made a mistake when he was about to walk back.
"You heard me," he said.
- Writer
