Chapter 20
Twenty
Idon’t sleep. Even with Art’s cinnamon bread filling my stomach, and a plan of attack half-formed in my head, the moment I lie down, everything unravels. I toss and turn for hours, Mr. Harris’ voice looping through my thoughts.
By morning, there’s a dull pounding behind my eyes. No amount of coffee helps. I’ve never been more tempted to call in sick and stay buried under the covers all day. But what would that accomplish? Nothing. Especially because today is the day I tell Theo everything. No matter what.
When I arrive at the office, I immediately know the day is about to become a dumpster fire. The atmosphere is eerily quiet. The Vortex Rise team is clustered in the glass conference room. Their faces are all pale and their shoulders stiff.
At a workstation near the window, Leon is typing like the keyboard swallowed his ATM card. When I set down my bag and coffee, he grunts, “Morning.”
“Hey,” I reply, my voice small. “What happened now?”
“The launch sequence,” he mutters. “Again.”
I inhale sharply. A cold knot forms in my stomach.
“The transient we fixed yesterday is gone, but it’s introduced a cascade into the secondary safety checks.
See this?” He points to a few lines of code on his monitor.
“The new buffer delay is making the backup sensors read as out of range. The system doesn’t know how to process the overlap, so it defaults straight into an emergency shutdown. ”
Translation—The fix birthed a new monster. The software is now so confused about which safety mode it’s supposed to be in that the entire system is effectively having a panic attack. The result is a total lockout the second you try to launch it.
Maybe I should’ve taken that sick day after all. “This is on me. I’m the one who suggested reassigning the redundant buffer.”
“Nope.” Leon swivels in his chair to face me, his expression uncharacteristically stern. “Kiddo, we both signed off on that fix. We tested it, and it passed. Don’t start playing the martyr, Kaori. It’s. Not. Your. Fault.”
Just then, the conference room door swings open. Theo stands in the doorway. The muscle ticking in his jaw tells me he’s moved past annoyed and straight into a cold, focused fury.
“Kaori. Leon.” His voice is clipped, leaving zero room for debate. “Conference room. Now.”
We grab our tablets and follow him inside. Whiteboards are layered with diagrams and frantic arrows, half-erased notes bleeding into new failed ideas. Every outlet is choked by a rat’s nest of charging cables. The table is a graveyard of empty coffee cups and grease-stained takeaway containers.
Theo walks to the front, marker in hand. “Here’s where we stand,” he says, exhaling deeply. “The last update stabilized the launch timing, but now the backup sensors don’t trust the new parameters. They’re flagging a false positive and triggering a hard emergency stop.”
He gestures toward the diagram of a looping line showing the coaster’s acceleration that ends with a jagged vertical drop.
“We know the issue is not the hardware. The track is fine. The mechanical systems are fine. It’s the logic.
The set of rules the computer uses to decide what’s safe and what’s not. ”
I nod.
“Kaori,” he says, his eyes locking on mine, “what’s your first impression?”
I shift in my seat, feeling the weight of the room’s gaze.
Is he really putting me on the spot right now?
I guess so. I take a deep breath. “Um, well . . . if the backup sensors are panicking because the timing shifted, maybe we just need to teach the system what the new normal looks like? Give it a fresh baseline to measure against.”
Behind a row of laptops, I hear a few of the London engineers whispering. I catch the tail end of a snide laugh.
“Junior engineer.”
“Sounds like a solution a child in nursery would come up with.”
“Hmm . . . that’s an interesting angle.” Theo turns back to the board, completely oblivious to the way his team is eyeing me. He’s in the zone, his mind already churning through the math. “Leon, what about—”
The door bangs open. Mr. Harris enters. “I heard from my secretary that we’ve encountered yet another setback?”
The room falls dead silent. The collective inhale is audible as everyone looks at Theo, who slowly caps his marker. “Yes, sir.”
His father stalks toward the front of the room. “You assured me this project was ahead of schedule, Theodore.”
“It was, sir. Until this morning.”
Mr. Harris holds up a hand, silencing him. “I’m not interested in excuses. If you were competent, the problem would already be solved. Clearly, you aren’t up to the task.”
Theo’s jaw clenches so tight, I swear I can hear his teeth grinding together.
His father snaps his fingers at the senior London engineer seated closest to him. “You. What’s your name?”
“Jackson Ball,” he stammers.
“Congratulations, Mr. Ball. You’ve just been promoted to project lead.
” Jackson’s face drains of color, looking more terrified than honored.
“Theodore, you have ten minutes to brief him before you pack your things. If you want to screw around, you can do it where you belong—back in that backwater American city.”
The words hit like a physical slap, but the silence that follows is even worse.
I look around the room, and my stomach turns.
No one moves or dares to breathe. Even Leon, who is usually the first to fire off a quip, is staring at his lap, his knuckles white where he’s gripping the edge of the table.
Mr. Harris hasn’t just come here because of the project’s latest snag.
He’s here to stage a public execution. He’s standing right at the center of the whiteboard, looming over Theo, deliberately making an example out of his own son to remind everyone else that if he can break the project lead, he can destroy them without a second thought.
It’s a textbook intimidation tactic, and it’s working. The room is paralyzed.
I’ve admired Excelsior Parks since I was a teenager. I thought they were the gold standard of design. But all I see now is a playground for a bully. I won’t stand for it any longer.
“Mr. Harris, Theo isn’t responsible for the error,” I say.
Theo turns sharply. “Kaori,” he warns, his voice low and dangerous. I ignore him.
“He’s been covering for my mistake,” I lie, stepping forward into the line of fire.
“I adjusted the launch logic to resolve the drift, and it destabilized the safety parameters. The issue is in the software’s tolerance limits.
If we widen the variance range, the sensors will stop triggering false shutdowns. It’s a twenty-minute fix.”
Mr. Harris blinks, his eyes wavering for a split second. “Your mistake?”
“Yes, sir. Entirely mine.”
“I see,” he says, smoothing his tie. “In that case, I suppose Theodore may have the rest of the day to finish up here before he leaves.” He grimaces, as if the mere act of being reasonable causes him physical pain.
I know I should stop. Every survival instinct I have is screaming at me to shut up, but I’m past caring. “With respect,” I add, “you also owe him an apology.”
“It’s fine,” Theo says quickly, reaching out to catch my arm.
“No, Theo, it isn’t,” I say firmly.
Mr. Harris’ face darkens, a mottled purple creeping up his neck. “How dare you. Nobody speaks to me like that.”
“You’re supposed to be a leader, Mr. Harris,” I tell him.
“Instead, you humiliate your staff to feel powerful. You’re nothing but a bully.
Theo is the only reason this project has gotten as far as it has.
He fixes what others can’t. He takes the hit when things go wrong and ensures his team gets the credit when they go right. That is the definition of a leader.”
“Theodore may tolerate this level of disrespect, but I certainly won’t.” Mr. Harris glares at me with pure vitriol. “You’re fired. Hand your badge to security. Now.”
He turns his gaze to his son, his voice dropping to a lethal hiss.
“If your junior engineer feels comfortable enough to address the COO of this company with such insolence, it is a direct reflection of your failure to lead. Test me again and I’ll pull your funding and reassign all your staff so they’re under a person who actually understands chain of command. ”
He strides out, slamming the door so hard, the glass partition rattles in its frame.
Theo immediately ushers me out of the room and down the hall, away from the prying eyes of the team. His eyes are a stormy, turbulent sea. “Why on earth did you do that?”
“Because I couldn’t stand to see him tear you down,” I snap, the anger finally giving way to a shaky breath.
“I was handling it.” He drags a hand through his hair, pacing a few steps.
“You were being humiliated in front of everyone.”
He looks away, his shoulders sagging. “You don’t understand how this works, Kaori. He’s my father. There are politics, expectations . . . a certain way things have to be done.” He lowers his gaze. “Playing his game is the only way I can protect the people on my team.”
“You shouldn’t have to let him get away with manipulating you.” My voice wavers. “He shouldn’t own you like that.”
He glances away. “You don’t know him like I do. He always finds your pressure points and leans on them until you break. I don’t know how he does it, but he could give a master class on it.”
“Maybe he could,” I say, stepping closer.
“But you deserve better than to be his target practice, and I’m just not afraid to say it out loud.
” I place my hand on his shoulder, feeling the iron-hard tension in his muscles.
“Is all of this—the humiliation, the control—really worth the promise you made to your grandmother?”
Theo’s shoulders sag, but he doesn’t give me a direct answer. He just looks at me with a pained sort of exhaustion. “I wish you’d just let him send me back to Orlando, Kaori. Now you’re out of a job.”