I watch her think, her jaw tightening. Then she steps forward and pulls a chair out.
The first tasks I give her are small. Translation of intercepted messages. Sorting coded shipments, identifying inconsistencies. Work meant to occupy her, to prove a point.
She surprises me. She doesn’t just complete them; she dissects them, highlights details I overlooked. Her mind is sharp, quick, unafraid of blood.
The first time she challenges me, it’s over a logistics decision. I’ve assigned one crew to handle distribution across two districts. She frowns at the map, then shakes her head.
“That’s a mistake.”
I raise a brow. “Explain.”
She doesn’t flinch. “You’re stretching them too thin. They’ll miss shipments, and rivals will notice. You’re inviting attack.”
The room goes quiet. My men stare at her like she’s suicidal. No one questions me. No one.
I should shut her down. I should remind her what happens to those who contradict me. Instead I lean back, folding my arms, studying her.
“Who would you assign?” I ask.
She blinks, startled for half a second, then points to two other crews, outlining her reasoning with calm precision. I listen. When she finishes, I nod once.
“Do it.”
The room exhales as if they’ve all been holding their breath. She sits back, eyes steady, unyielding.
It happens again. And again. She points out flaws, challenges my strategies, counters my orders with logic sharp enough to draw blood. Each time, I test her. Each time, I find myself listening.
No one else would dare. No one else has earned that right.
***
At night, I think about it. About her voice steady in a room full of killers, about her eyes flashing as she argues with me, about the fire that doesn’t extinguish no matter how many times I try to smother it.
I tell myself it’s strategy. I tell myself I need her mind, her instincts. That giving her these pieces of my empire is just another way to keep her tied to me.
When I see her bent over a ledger, hair falling loose around her face, lips pursed in thought, the truth digs deeper. Respect.
No one has ever spoken to me the way she does. No one has ever looked at me with defiance and survived. Yet, with her, I don’t just allow it… I want it.
***
The war room doesn’t feel the same anymore. It used to be a place of silence and smoke, of men who followed orders and never dared to question them. Now it’s littered with her handwriting, her notes scrawled across files, her sharp voice cutting through the air when something doesn’t add up.
Vivienne has made herself part of it whether anyone likes it or not, and I’ve stopped trying to deny it.
Tonight the table is covered in maps, shipment reports, and a ledger so thick it looks like it could kill a man if dropped on his head. I stand at the far end, cigarette burning low between my fingers, while she sits cross-legged in the chair opposite me, hair falling loose from the pins she shoved in earlier, scribbling something on the margin of a manifest. The men watch her with thinly veiled suspicion. Some of them shift uncomfortably, others avoid looking at her at all, but she doesn’t care.
“You missed this,” she says suddenly, flipping the sheet around and sliding it across the table toward me.
I take it, glancing down. She’s circled a number, drawn an arrow to the margin, where she’s written in neat script:weight discrepancy, check northern warehouse.
One of the younger men at the table clears his throat. “She shouldn’t be—”
My eyes snap to him before he can finish. The words die in his throat. “She stays,” I say, and that ends it.
Vivienne doesn’t thank me. She doesn’t need to. Instead she leans forward, tapping the page with her finger. “Two crates short. Either someone’s skimming or someone’s sloppy. Which is it?”
The room goes quiet. No one speaks, waiting for me.
