The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 697

Feby had rehearsed her first morning as Head Supervisor down to the minute.

The minute lasted until Beatrix Hargrove set the thing itself on the desk between them.

"So the work is mostly control," she said. "If nothing happens on the line, I could almost say I have nothing to do at all."

"Glad you know it." Beatrix Hargrove didn't look up from her desk. "And if a problem does happen, you handle it first. We are the people who make sure nothing happens on that line. Ever."

"Alright," Feby said. "Then let's make sure nothing goes wrong."

"Our new product," Beatrix said. "One unit of mana in. Five to six out. It refines. It amplifies. It does not bleed."

She placed it in Feby's palm.

The tile hummed there, warm as a held breath. Feby set it down the way you set down something that has just rearranged your next ten years.

"This is what your division exists to bring into the world, Head Supervisor. And what your firm has been engaged to promote."

Her firm. There it was. The thing she'd been carrying up the stairs all morning like a stone in her chest.

Honesty had gotten her this far. She saw no reason to abandon it in a nicer office.

"Miss Hargrove, there's a problem, and I'd rather say it than have someone else discover it. The firm holding the launch campaign — I own it. As of two days ago. I supervise the division whose product my own company is paid to advertise. In any court in the Arcanum State, that's a conflict of—"

"The chairman was informed of your ownership before the award was issued. He approved it. In writing."

A thin folder crossed the desk. One page. One seal.

"He was, if anything, very specific. Who better to promote our work than our own Head Supervisor?"

Feby read the page. It was exactly what Beatrix said it was, dated the morning of the award.

It did not calm her. It did the opposite.

She had lain awake half the night lining up the impossible things.

The interview she shouldn't have gotten. The post that hadn't existed a month ago. The campaign that landed on a company nobody knew she owned. Every thread ran through one unnamed man on the top floor of this building.

The question had been standing in her throat since dawn. She let it out before her better judgment could catch it.

"Miss Hargrove. Is your chairman's name Alexander Leonhart?"

Something happened behind Beatrix's eyes.

It was fast, and it was small — one skipped beat, sealed over with twenty-two years of practiced calm. If Feby hadn't spent her whole life reading rooms full of relatives who wished her harm, she'd have missed it.

"Miss Steinmeyer. I'm going to ask you to drop that question, and I'm going to tell you why. Our chairman is a scion of one of the great Houses of Fenmarch. His identity is sealed at his own instruction, and the instruction was not gentle. If I confirmed so much as the first letter of his name, I would lose considerably more than my post."

Beatrix folded her hands. "Please don't ask me again."

A scion of Fenmarch. Feby had to admire how fast the woman could produce a great House out of thin air.

Then the fever that had kept her up all night broke, all at once, into embarrassment.

Alex. She had built a secret emperor out of Alex.

Alex, who had arrived in her life with no records, no coin, no House, no past — not even clothes. Alex, whom she had personally vouched into legal existence, because without her signature he did not officially exist.

Alex, who unloaded crates and paid her two hundred a night for a borrowed room.

He was kind to her. The world so rarely was. And she'd mistaken kindness for conspiracy.

"Forgive me," she said. "It was a foolish question."

"Most of the honest ones are." Beatrix slid a slip of paper across the desk, casual as a lunch order. "One hundred million. Drawable at any bank. The advance on your firm's campaign."

Feby's fingers closed around more money than her family had seen in three generations. Her voice came out steadier than her hands.

"Thank you."

She stood, and the working day began.

When the door clicked shut, Beatrix drew out her tile and composed a message to a contact listed under no name at all.

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