Chapter 4

After that, things seemed to settle back into quiet.

I still clocked in on time every day, handled what was on my desk, said nothing extra, did nothing extra.

To Geraldine and Jude, my silence read as total surrender.

Jude only grew bolder in front of me. He even started dictating to me about my own work, right there in department meetings.

"Kent, this proposal doesn't work. The logic isn't clear enough. Take it back and redo it."

He held a plan I'd poured a week into, playing the visionary, mapping out the terrain, and the so-called "problems" he pointed to got even the most basic technical facts wrong.

The rest of the department kept their heads down, furious and silent.

I didn't push back. I just nodded. "Sure thing, Assistant Lambert."

Geraldine, meanwhile, treated me as if I weren't there at all. She'd begun preparing the biggest project in the company's history, the Skyvault Initiative.

It was an AI-driven city operating system built for the future, valued at five billion. Whoever led it would have a foothold in the next decade of the tech wave.

It was also the exact project Chavez Global had offered me five million a year to run.

Geraldine clearly wanted that enormous prize for herself. It would decide whether she could truly hold the CEO's chair and prove her ability to the board and to the old chairman.

She pulled in every core executive, held one closed-door meeting after another, and left out the one real technical heavyweight the company had left. Me.

She thought she could crack this hard bone with Jude and that crop of freshly hired "top graduates" who could only talk theory on paper.

I watched, cold.

I watched them wander further and further down the wrong road, watched them argue endlessly over basic architecture, watched Jude carry a preliminary concept riddled with holes to Geraldine to claim the credit.

The whispers about me multiplied around the office.

"Kent's finished. He's just a glorified coder now."

"Shame. A legend, fallen just like that."

When Geraldine passed me in the hallway now and then, her eyes carried a trace of contempt and pity, as if she were looking at some poor wretch the times had left behind.

She believed she had me completely under her thumb. She believed I was a tiger with its teeth pulled, fit only to crouch at her feet and wag for scraps.

She was too sure of herself.

At last, after a month of her team building their machine behind closed doors, they hit the wall.

The core technical barrier of the Skyvault Initiative was something they simply could not break through.

The project stalled.

That was when a meeting notice landed in the inbox of every employee at director level and above.

Sender: the CEO's Office.

Subject: Meeting to Launch the Skyvault Initiative and Appoint Its Lead.

I looked at that email, and a cold curve slowly formed at the corner of my mouth.

The fish was finally about to bite.

Around the huge oval conference table sat all the company's core executives.

The air was thick with tension and anticipation.

Geraldine sat at the head, in a sharply tailored black suit that gave her real presence. Her face wore the confident smile of someone who'd already won, as if the Skyvault Initiative were hers for the taking.

Slides flipped across the enormous screen, laying out the project's grand blueprint and its staggering valuation.

"Everyone," Geraldine cleared her throat, her voice carrying through the silent room, "the Skyvault Initiative is the make-or-break battle for our company's next ten years. Failure is not an option!"

She spoke with fire, her gaze sweeping over each of them.

At last it landed on me, in the seat she'd deliberately placed at the very far end of the table.

"This project is extremely difficult, technically. The challenge is enormous. I need the most capable, the most trustworthy, and the most dependable person to lead it."

Every eye in the room turned with her words and fixed on me.

Some sympathetic, some curious, some savoring the show.

Geraldine was very pleased with that effect, all attention on the moment. She looked at me, the corners of her mouth lifting into a smile that carried charity, a gift bestowed.

"Kent," she raised her voice on purpose, "I know the company made some adjustments to your pay a while back, and you may have your own feelings about that. But now, here's your chance to prove your worth."

She paused, as if waiting for me to break into grateful tears.

"This project, I've decided, will still be handed to you to run!"