November 2nd, 2017 – Morning
Sandra Woods had been dying when she met Victoria Hale.
Not quickly. Not dramatically.
Just the slow sort of dying that came from being seventeen, barefoot on broken concrete in a city that wasn't on most maps, with a face swollen on one side and a belly hollow on the other.
The men who'd put her there had been efficient. They had taken what they wanted and left what they didn't. She remembered dust, heat, and the sound of flies.
And then she remembered a car.
Black, air-conditioned, wrong for that dirt road. It had stopped beside her like a hallucination.
The window had rolled down.
A woman inside, heavily pregnant, had looked out at her. Dark hair tied back, sunglasses pushed up onto her head, a pistol resting casually on her thigh.
"Do you want to die here," the woman had asked in accented English, "or die somewhere else doing something useful?"
Sandra had squinted at her through swelling.
"Is there a third option?" she'd rasped.
The woman's mouth had curved, not quite into a smile.
"Statistically?" she'd said. "No."
The car door had opened.
Two men in clean shirts and cheap sunglasses had moved toward her. She'd flinched, then realized they were offering water.
"Drink," the woman had said. "Then decide. I don't have all day. My son is impatient."
She'd patted her stomach when she said it.
Later, when Sandra learned that was Asher—who would grow up with a bedroom, and education, and a mother who could buy entire buildings—it had felt like the punchline to a long, bitter joke.
Back then, it had just felt like a hand reached down into her grave.
She'd drunk the water.
She'd gotten in the car.
She hadn't died.
Not in the usual way.
---
Present
Sandra watched Asher Hale unsuccessfully knot his tie in the lobby mirror and thought, not for the first time, that genetics were a strange comedy act.
He had Victoria's eyes and some of her stubbornness, but none of her polish. His hair wouldn't behave. His shirt collar was a fraction too big. His expression held the particular mix of defiance and bewilderment common to men who had spent their twenties trying to be ordinary and had just discovered they were not.
"Stop strangling yourself," she said.
He yanked at the knot. "Ties are stupid."
"Ties are how rich people identify each other in the wild," she said. "Come here."
He shuffled over. She straightened his collar and redid the knot with quick, practiced movements. Up close, she could see the shadows under his eyes, the slight tremor in his fingers.
"You didn't sleep," she observed.
"Sleeping is for people whose mothers didn't say 'hide first, then decide whether to run or fight' before passing out," he said.
"That does tend to interfere with rest," she said.
He huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh.
"How is she?" he asked.
"Stable," Sandra said. "No significant change overnight. Dr. Wade is still running tests."
He searched her face for more.
She gave him nothing extra.
"Is the Board going to try something?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
He blinked. "You're not even going to lie a little?"
"No," she said. "That's your advantage today."
"My advantage?" he repeated.
She stepped back, assessing him: tie straight, jacket acceptable, shoes shined just enough.
"Most people who walk into that room believe the Board has their best interests in mind," she said. "You don't. That makes you dangerous in a very tiny way."
"You have a strange definition of comforting," he said.
"Thank you," she said.
He looked toward the frosted-glass doors that led to the executive floor.
"They think I'm here to inherit?" he asked. "Like… baby CEO?"
"No," she said. "No one in that room thinks you're going to run anything."
He blinked. "That's… rude."
"Accurate," she said. "You have no training, no experience, and a documented history of quitting anything that smells like office politics. They're not idiots."
"Then why am I here?" he demanded.
"Because the law likes heirs," she said. "Banks like heirs. Succession clauses like heirs. Your signature makes it easier to pretend this is a smooth transition, not a power grab."
"So I'm a prop," he said.
"A piece of packaging," she corrected. "Nice surname, tragic situation, grieving son on the brochure. Makes everyone feel better about whatever they're really signing."
"And you're okay with that?" he asked.
"I am okay with you knowing it," she said. "What we do with that knowledge comes later."
He rubbed his palms on his trousers.
"Smile, nod, stall," he murmured.
"Exactly," she said.
He hesitated.
"Did she really start with… just a gun?" he asked. "She said that yesterday. In the hospital."
Sandra's gaze drifted for a moment, past his shoulder, to another time.
"Yes," she said.
"And you?" he asked. "What were you?"
"A substitute," she said. "She needed someone who could stand where she would rather not. Take meetings she didn't want to waste bullets on. Sit in chairs that might be rigged."
"Like today?" he asked.
"Today, I'm your substitute," she said. "You're the one in the dangerous chair."
"Oh, good," he said weakly. "I always wanted to be furniture."
She almost smiled.
"You're not furniture," she said. "You're leverage. For them. For us, if we're clever. For you, if you survive long enough to pick a side."
He stared at her.
"You're terrible at small talk," he said.
"I don't do small talk," she said. "I do preparation."
She checked her watch.
"Board meets in five minutes," she said. "Last chance to run away and change your name."
He thought about it just long enough for it to be funny.
"Nah," he said. "I'm curious what color they'll be."
She tilted her head. "What?"
"Nothing," he said quickly. "Just… a stupid way my brain's been trying to cope."
She filed that away.
Sandra wasn't given to feelings, but she believed in patterns.
Victoria saw people in terms of risk and reward.
Sandra saw them in terms of position and movement.
Asher, apparently, saw them in color.
It was new. And new things had to be mapped.
She knew one thing: whatever else he was, he was not a Chairman. But a man who could sniff out lies and fear without training? In their world, that was an asset waiting to be weaponized.
Field material. If he lived long enough.
"Let's go," she said.
They walked toward the doors.