Most everyone has a mild to nodialect, but the South Philly guys carry a much thicker Philly accent.
“Again,” Akara smiles, “justaskwhere they’re from. Saves me time.” He finally takes a seat on the mats and closes thecircle. Looking around to each of us, his lips fall in a serious line. “You’re going to hate what I have to say about the charity event, but you get a grand total of five fucking minutes to complain. Then you’re done. I don’t want to hear anyone whining over the comms for the next three months. Don’t be that guy.”
Quinn nods repeatedly.Akara should’ve been his mentor.
I hang my arm casually on my knee. “Too bad Oscar’s already that guy.”
“Get back to me when you’ve been assigned to Charlie Cobalt. You’d start bitching if your client chose to experiment with hallucinogenics at a metal concert, and not even a day later, he takes an eighteen-hour flight to volunteer for the Red Cross on anothercontinent. I’ve never even seen him tired or even yawn.”
“I’m sure he’s grown tired of you, Oliveira,” I say.
Everyone laughs again.
Quinn nods to his older brother. “You shouldn’t bitch about your client to Jo. All yesterday, she saidI can protect Charlie better than Oscar.”
Oscar sighs in annoyance. Their younger sister Joana isn’t a part of security, and I’ve only met her once or twice around the gym. She just started boxing professionally this year, and the Oliveira brothers don’t want her to quit.
For as much as Oscar complains, there’s no one that could do his job.
Many have tried. He’s tactically strategic, and the perfect fit for Charlie Cobalt. It’s why he’s been on his detail for three years and counting.
Akara snaps his fingers to his palm. “You all ready for the news?”
Donnelly nods. “Lay it on us.”
Akara starts, “Moffy was really clear that he’s not allowing any of his siblings or cousins under eighteen to attend.”
“Epsilon is out,” Oscar says since SFE protects the young kids.
Akara shakes his head and pushes back his black hair. “Most of them will be at the event for extra security.”
I stretch out my legs and bare feet, my muscles cramped. We’ve never needed extra security for the Camp-Away, and that fact hoists dead silence in the air.
“We asked Moffy for more than seven days to background check the attendees. Which means that he’d have to close the raffle more than a week before the event,” Akara mentions the largest point of contention for security. “Moffy agreed to give us more time, but he printed out twelve pages of stats that Jane had calculated.”
I shake my head, my smiling forming.Wolf scout.I know what he did before Akara explains the rest.
“He predicted the profit loss for every extra week that we’d hypothetically close the raffle early. If we were to take fourteen days to background check the attendees, the event would lose about ten million.”
That’s not a little sum of money.
“Their lives are priceless,” Donnelly says. “Did you tell them that?”
“I did,” Akara says to all of us, “but you know Moffy.”
“He’s stubborn,” Oscar says.
“Selfless,” I add. “H.M.C. Philanthropies helps people.”
Quinn’s brows knit together. “Don’t the families just contribute their wealth to the foundation? Raising more money is chump change in comparison. He could even cancel the event and it’d be fine?—”
“No,” the rest of us say in unison.
Akara leans towards Quinn. “All of the H.M.C. money is allocated to four areas: education, environment, LGBTQ issues, and mental health. Within those categories, Moffy built specificprograms and initiatives, and not every one is given the same sum. Some programs rely completely on these events.”
“Like the Camp-Away,” I chime in. “All of the earnings go to One More Day.” Everyone knows the program Maximoff created. One More Day provides aid to low-income individuals in need of addiction rehab.
Oscar swishes his water. “Do we really want to deny people-in-need ten million? Just to have an extra week to weed out the hecklers, glitter-and-flour-bombers—possible murderers and rapists?”
