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Chapter 2: The Presentation
publish date:
2026-03-15 20:36:37(Sloane’s POV)
The slides were a band-aid on a bullet wound. I’d stayed up until 3 AM building them from Kai’s outline, making the data look simple, foolproof. Leon had glanced at them for maybe ninety seconds that morning, chewing on a piece of toast. “Looks fancy,” he’d said, with zero interest. Then he’d left the kitchen. Now, standing at the back of the lecture hall, I felt sick. Leon was at the podium. He wore the dark sweater I’d left out. He hadn’t shaved closely, leaving just enough scruff to look deliberately careless, not messy. The professor, Dr. Lennox, sat in the front row with a frown already etched on his face. Clara Yang, Leon’s partner, was poised beside the clicker, her smile so tight it looked painful. “Go ahead whenever you’re ready, Mr. Sterling,” Lennox said, his voice dry as dust. Leon nodded. He didn’t look at his notes. He didn’t even glance at the first slide, a complex graph I’d made pretty with colors. He just looked out at the class, a lazy, confident smile on his face. “So,” he began, his voice relaxed, like he was starting a story at a party. “The Economic Paradox of Thrift. Basically, it’s about how saving your money can screw everything up for everyone.” A few students chuckled. Lennox did not. Leon proceeded to walk through my slides, but he didn’t present them. He narrated around them. He used words like “weird” and “kinda backwards” instead of “counterintuitive” and “deflationary.” He’d point at a complicated chart and say, “So this big dip here? That’s the economy getting sad because we all decided to be good kids and save our allowance.” It was horrifying. It was also weirdly compelling. The class was leaning in, smiling. He was making the dense, scary material feel like gossip. Clara clicked through the slides with robotic precision, her eyes screaming murder. He finished the last slide, a summary of key mitigations, and shrugged. “So I guess the moral of the story is spend a little. For the team.” He grinned. “Or don’t. I’m not your dad.” The class laughed. Lennox cleared his throat. “An informal summation, Mr. Sterling. Clara, perhaps you could provide the formal conclusion?” Clara jumped in, her voice crisp and academic, cleaning up the mess Leon had made with surgical precision. The contrast was brutal. When it was over, Leon swaggered back to his seat, receiving a few claps on the shoulder from nearby guys. He caught my eye from across the room and winked. My stomach did a full, nauseating flip. He hadn’t crashed and burned. He’d skateboarded through a museum. He’d broken all the rules and gotten away with it because he was charming. The anger I wanted to feel was tangled up with a thick, unwelcome thread of relief. I slipped out the side door into the empty hall. I needed air. I got about ten feet before a voice stopped me. “A fascinating interpretation of my work.” Kai. He was leaning against the wall next to a fire extinguisher, his arms crossed. He must have been watching from the door. His face was a calm mask, but a tiny muscle flickered in his jaw. “He got through it,” I said, my voice defensive. “They listened.” “They were entertained by a clown. There’s a difference.” He pushed off the wall. “He trivialized every point. Made a complex systemic risk sound like a parable about grocery shopping.” “He got the concept across!” I hissed, surprising myself with my own fervor. “They understood it! Isn’t that the point?” Kai’s eyes chilled. “The point is rigor. Respect for the material. Not turning a senior-level analysis into a stand-up routine.” He looked down the hall where Leon would soon emerge. “He doesn’t respect anything. Especially not you, for the all-nighters you pull to cover for him.” The words hit their target with deadly accuracy. I flinched. Before I could respond, the lecture hall doors banged open. Leon emerged, his bag slung over one shoulder, surrounded by his laughing friends. He saw us, Kai’s icy disapproval, my flushed, stressed face, and his grin widened. He detached from his group and sauntered over. “Well? Do I get a gold star, teach?” he asked, looking directly at me, ignoring Kai. “You get a C-minus and a partner who probably wants to poison your coffee,” I snapped, the hurt from Kai’s comment sharpening my tongue. Leon’s smile didn’t falter. “But you liked it.” He said it like a fact, his eyes daring me to deny it. “Admit it. It was better than watching paint dry.” “It was unprofessional,” Kai stated, his voice cutting through our charged stare-off. Leon finally turned to him. The air between them crackled. “It got the job done. Not everyone needs to sound like a talking textbook, Kai.” “Some of us,” Kai replied, his voice dropping to a deadly quiet, “understand that the ‘job’ is about more than just ‘getting it done.’ It’s about doing it right. Something you’ve never grasped.” Leon’s cocky mask slipped for a second. Real anger, raw and personal, flashed in his eyes. “Right. Because your way is the only way. The perfect, sterile, soul-crushing way.” They were inches apart now, two opposite magnetic poles repelling each other. I was the useless metal shaving caught in the middle. “Stop it,” I whispered, but neither heard me. “My way,” Kai said, “builds legacies. Your way builds tabloid headlines and repair bills.” Leon laughed, a sharp, ugly sound. “At least mine’s fun.” His gaze sliced back to me. “Ask Sloane. She spends all her time in your legacy-building factory. She must be dying for a little fun.” His words were a grenade. Kai went perfectly still. His eyes moved from Leon to me, a cold, questioning flicker in them. Were you entertained? I felt exposed. Naked. My loyalty, my professionalism, my secret thoughts, all suddenly on trial between them. “I have work to do,” I choked out, turning on my heel. I heard Leon’s low, triumphant chuckle behind me. I didn’t look back. Hours later, the scene still played in my head. Kai’s cold critique. Leon’s provocative challenge. The way they’d both, in completely different ways, looked to me for a verdict. I wasn’t just their manager. I was the audience. The judge. The prize. And as I opened the file from Nathaniel Sterling, the Zurich details swimming before my eyes, the reality sank in like a stone.
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