Julia Van Veensits in her private office on the sixty-second floor of Global Dynamix’s headquarters, the Manhattan skyline glittering behind her like a crown she’s long since earned. The lights are dimmed. The door is locked. On the wall-mounted screen, Vanguard slides a milkshake across a sticky diner table toward Mia Baxter, and something in Julia’s chest tightens like a fist.
She watches him lean forward. Watches the way his eyes track the journalist’s movements—the tilt of her head, the curve of her mouth around the straw. Watches him smile. Watches his ice blue eyes burn. Not the camera-ready performance she conditioned into him, but something raw.
Something real.
Something she’s never seen directed at her.
But God, how she’s wanted it.
Julia pauses the CCTV footage, freezing the frame on his face. That face was already handsome and needed no perfecting, but the rest of him, she sculpted like clay. She spent four years creating the genetic modifications that made his body into a weapon, into a superhero, the world’s first, the conditioning thattransformed a broken soldier into America’s symbol of hope. She took the great man Nate Whitaker was and made him into something greater. Something extraordinary.
He’s perfect.Shemade him perfect.
And now, he’s looking at someone else like she hung the goddamn moon.
“Replay,” she says, and the footage begins again.
She’s watched it eleven times now. Each viewing reveals something new, whether it be a micro-expression, a change in posture, or the way his pupils dilate and nostrils flare when the journalist laughs. Julia catalogs each detail with the clinical precision that made her the foremost neuroscientist of her generation.
Mia Baxter is pretty in an obvious sort of way—dark hair, warm dark eyes, expressive brows, and a flirty mouth. Julia pulls up her file again on a secondary screen: King’s College London, double degree, bylines in various international publications. Clean background. Almost too clean, but then again, she’s used to working with unscrupulous people.
What concerns her, though, is the way Vanguard is behaving.
In the years since his enhancement, she’s seen him with women before, models, actresses, socialites who threw themselves at America’s golden boy. He’d indulged occasionally at the start—he has certain drives, after all, drives GlobalDynamix would love to keep buried—but he’d never beendistracted, never let anyone get under his skin.
Until now.
Julia watches him talk about his sister—his sister, for God’s sake—and feels something ugly coil in her stomach.
Not jealousy. No, Julia Van Veen doesn’t get jealous.
She gets even.
Her tablet chimes, and Marsh’s name comes up.
She considers ignoring it, but Conrad Marsh, despite being her intellectual inferior in every measurable way, still holds the CEO title. He still has the board’s ear and all the control he hasn’t earned, all because he was a billionaire tech-bro who knew someone who loaned someone money who blackmailed Elron Masters, or so the rumors go.
Politics. The one arena where brains and brilliance aren’t enough and at the same time don’t count for much.
She accepts the call. “Conrad,” she says tiredly.
“You’re needed in my office, Julia.” His face fills the screen, all sharp angles, dyed black hair, and white veneers. “We need to discuss our asset.”
Ourasset. As if he had anything to do with Vanguard’s creation. He just swooped in after and took all the glory.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Julia says and ends the call.
Conrad Marsh’s office is everything Julia’s is not: a hard mix of glass and chrome and toxic masculinity, designed tointimidate rather than inspire. Designed to make people snooze, more like it. He’s standing by the window when she enters, hands clasped behind his back, playing at being a visionary like the ones you see in the movies. Julia isn’t fooled.
“I’ve seen the footage from the diner,” he says without turning around. “The journalist.”
“Mia Baxter,” she supplies, already feeling defensive. “You know we all signed off on her.”
“I’m aware. What I want to know is why our billion-dollar asset is sharing childhood trauma with some British reporter over chocolate milkshakes.” He turns to face her, jaw tight, his handsome face turning ugly. “He talked about hissister, Julia. That’s not in any press-approved talking points.”
“No,” Julia agrees, settling into one of his uncomfortable chairs that resembles a torture device, “it isn’t.”
“Then explain to me how this happened. You assured me he was manageable.”
