Free Web NovelChapter 134: 134 | The Aggressiveness of California Gold
The days between acceptance letters and Saturday morning dissolved into training sessions, meal prep, and the specific domestic chaos that surfaces when two women with strong opinions find themselves on the same shared furniture document. Diane’s list ran by room, sorted by vendor. Sloane’s ran by vibe, populated by screenshots from Instagram that she’d zoomed in on until the pixel count gave up. freewebnoveℓ.com
Three separate throw pillow arguments by Thursday evening.
I stayed out of it. Two months in this body had taught me that the single most dangerous position in the Fitzgerald household was between Diane and Sloane when they both needed to be right. My job in those moments was to nod at the correct intervals, agree with whoever had eyes on me, and find somewhere else to be when the conversation turned to thread counts.
Saturday arrived the way California mornings always did, with that particular golden aggressiveness that had no interest in my sleep schedule. Boundless Stamina meant four hours was sufficient. I’d gotten three, because Diane had decided eleven PM was an appropriate time to find out whether the enhancement effect scaled with intensity, and it did, emphatically, for the better part of ninety minutes.
Showered. Dark jeans. White fitted henley that Diane had purchased for me on Thursday, described as "casual but competent," which I understood as her dressing me like a display model because she genuinely could not help herself.
The sleeves pushed back past my forearms, where two months of training had left something worth noticing. The collar sat open wide enough to show the collarbone that Sloane had bitten hard enough to matter, three days ago.
I looked good. I looked like someone who belonged in a furniture store spending money he hadn’t technically earned on apartments he’d gotten into through a combination of genuine effort and a dating sim engine that paid out for sleeping with his guardian and her daughter.
My life was a fever dream with a credit card attached.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, the Range Rover’s keys hanging from my right hand. Morning light came through the tall windows and spread across the hardwood floors in that particular California gold that turned everything into a magazine spread. From upstairs, movement. Running water from one bathroom. A hair dryer from the other. The recognizable chaos of two women who had agreed on a departure time and were now treating it as a general suggestion.
"We’re leaving at nine," I called up the staircase. "It’s eight forty-two."
A door opened. Sloane’s voice came off the hallway walls.
"Twenty minutes!"
A second door. Diane’s voice, warmer and lower.
"Twenty minutes, sugar!"
I looked at the ceiling. I looked at the keys. I walked to the living room couch, sat down, and picked up the remote because twenty minutes meant forty and the television was right there.
The one upside was that Diane had told me I could drive. She treated those car keys like state secrets. Sloane had her own coupe, a black thing that handled like a go-kart with personal grievances, but the family SUV was Diane’s territory. Matte grey Range Rover. Leather seats that cost more than most people’s monthly rent. A sound system that probably required a permit. I’d driven it twice in two months, both times supervised, both times with Diane delivering commentary on my lane changes that felt less like guidance and more like a formal performance review.
This morning she’d tossed the keys across the breakfast table without a word. Just "You’re driving" and a smile that could have meant she was rewarding something I’d done correctly or preparing something I hadn’t seen coming yet.
The flat screen above the fireplace was the size of a small country, one of those eighty-five inch panels that put you in the front row of whatever was on. The Hero Sports Network loaded by default, the way it always did in this house, and the split-screen studio of Point of Impact filled the wall.
8:48 on a Saturday. The show ran weekdays at nine, but Saturday pulled the week’s highest-rated segments on a loop from eight onward. I’d caught pieces of it over the past two months, usually with Sloane at the breakfast table providing live commentary that was louder and significantly more profane than anything either host produced.
Malcolm Mercer held the left side of the screen. Silver hair swept back from the high forehead. Dark suit, gold pocket square. The reading glasses on the end of his nose that he never actually used for reading. He was already leaning forward, one palm flat on the desk, the other hand pointing at something off camera with the energy of a man who woke up every morning in search of a confrontation and took it personally when noon arrived without one.
Sabrina Jane sat across from him in a fitted emerald blazer, red hair in loose waves past her shoulders. Small gold dagger earrings. I’d watched enough of this show to read the earrings. Daggers meant she’d come to make someone bleed.
The lower third read: TEMPEST INTERVIEW, RECORDED THURSDAY.
The segment had already started. The studio’s third chair held someone I’d logged in research sessions but never seen in a live context.
Roza Guseva sat with her legs crossed and her arms folded tight across her chest, like she’d been asked to come to television and had decided to bring her entire personality as a counterargument.
She was small. That was the first thing. Her frame made the studio chair look like furniture built for someone else, like the producers had accidentally booked a teenager and nobody had caught it in time. Pale blonde in a practical bob. Green eyes sharp enough to communicate active grievance toward the concept of being filmed. Dark cargo pants. A fitted black base layer that she apparently wore to everything, including nationally broadcast interview programmes. No visible concession to the setting whatsoever.
She looked like she’d come directly from a combat zone and considered this detour a personal insult.
"Tempest." Mercer used the warmth he reserved for Heroes he considered worth his time, a short list he protected carefully. "Your case record this quarter is frankly astonishing. Seventeen resolved in four months, three of them S-tier threats that other agencies had sitting in queue for weeks. Does the pace concern you at all?"
"No."
