Daisy typed quietly from the corner.
Brynn tapped the side of her coffee mug. “Speaking of people we should hire before someone smarter steals them, Daisy needs to be full-time.”
Daisy’s typing stopped.
Summer looked at Brynn. “We discussed support expansion in general terms.”
“Yes, and now I am using my outside voice. Daisy can run a calendar, make a panicking client breathe in complete sentences, find a ghosted passport, and somehow keep the printer from having a psychosomatic breakdown in the middle of a deadline. That’s not intern work. That’s a woman with a fully developed frontal lobe and a future. Hire her before I steal her for my own chaotic bullshit.”
Daisy looked up, her face a mask of terrifying competence. “I prefer ‘The Person Who Knows Where the Bodies and the Backup Toner are Buried,’ but I’m flexible for the right salary.”
Brynn pointed at her. “See? Diplomatic. Useful.”
Rayann leaned closer to her camera. “Brynn is right, and I need everyone to appreciate the personal growth it takes for meto say that out loud. Daisy is terrifyingly useful. Rome needs one of her. Possibly two. Someone who can track vendors, client upgrades, and whatever fresh nonsense the villa owners are calling ‘traditional local charm’ this week.”
Brynn sat back. “I want everyone to pause and appreciate this historic moment.”
“Do not make me regret it,” Rayann said.
“Put together a proposal,” Summer said.
Brynn lifted her pen. “And not just emergency help. A real intern pipeline. Hospitality programs. Logistics students. Weird little spreadsheet goblins Annie can identify in the wild.”
Annie didn’t look up. “I can.”
“Of course you can,” I said.
The room shifted around that sentence. Not dramatically. No one gasped. The walls remained upright. But my voice had come out without resistance, without the familiar reflex to take the idea, examine it, own it, improve it, control it until it belonged safely to me.
Daisy’s tablet made a soft click.
Gabe cleared his throat. “Security update?”
Summer nodded. “Go ahead.”
He connected his tablet to the screen. A clean matrix appeared: destination, vendor category, transfer risk, local contact, escalation path.
Max’s bones were in it. The structure, the color coding, the unforgiving clarity. Before Rome, before embassy work, before Rayann became the center of his life, Max had been Wilder Horizons’ director of security and logistics. Now he was building a different life beside ours instead of inside it.
Gabe stood with his shoulders squared. Young, yes. Not unready. There was a difference.
“We have procedures,” he said. “They work for standard luxury travel. Vendor vetting, transfer confirmation, clientmovement logs, emergency contact chains. But they were not built for targeted digital access tied to physical movement.”
The room quieted.
My pen stopped moving.
Gabe continued. “Max’s system assumes most threats are logistical failure, vendor misrepresentation, medical emergency, or client behavior. It doesn’t fully cover credential compromise, manifest exposure, or coordinated attempts to connect data access with physical location.”
Sarah’s text returned in my mind.
They shouldn’t have authenticated.
My fingers tightened around the pen until the plastic edge pressed into my skin.
Summer looked at me. “What do we need?”
The answer arrived before I wanted it.
