The council chamber was dressed for theater.
Olivia had always thought that, even before she’d started covering city hall. The carved wood, the high ceilings, the horseshoe of desks facing the witness table in the center—it all screamed *performance* as much as governance.
Journalists clustered at the back, badges swinging, phones already out. She slipped into a seat near the aisle, notebook ready. TV cameras perched on tripods like mantises. A couple of YouTubers she recognized from CityWatch retweeted calling themselves “independent media” set up livestream rigs.
The placards in front of the council members’ seats gleamed under the lights. Reyes. Patel. O’Donnell. Each with their stack of papers, their aides hovering behind with binders and bottled water.
At the witness table sat Jake.
No suit jacket today. Just a white shirt, sleeves rolled, navy tie loosened a fraction. He looked like he’d dressed up because he had to and then stripped away anything that felt like armor.
Carla sat behind him, expression carefully neutral, pen poised over a legal pad. A city lawyer occupied the opposite side, face set in the kind of faintly smug expression Olivia instinctively distrusted.
The council chair, Reyes, banged her gavel.
“This is the Committee on Technology and Infrastructure’s public hearing on the city’s contracts with TerraNova,” she intoned. “We are here to discuss scope, oversight, and contingency plans.”
Translation: *We’re here to look angry on camera about something we already signed off on.*
Olivia wrote that in her notebook, underlining it twice.
Reyes turned her gaze on Jake.
“Mr. Morrison,” she said. “Thank you for joining us today.”
“Thank you for having me,” he said, voice even.
“Let’s start at a basic level,” she said. “For those watching at home who may not be familiar with the technical details. In plain terms, what does TerraNova control in our city’s systems?”
He didn’t flinch.
“We don’t ‘control’ anything,” he said. “We provide a platform that aggregates data from existing systems—traffic signals, buses, water sensors—and runs models to optimize their operation. City agencies set the policies. We provide tools.”
It was a polished answer, but not false.
Reyes pounced on the word. “Tools,” she said. “Tools that, according to your own documentation, are embedded in everything from bus dispatch to elevator maintenance in public housing.”
“Yes,” he said. “Because those systems were fragmented and inefficient. The city came to us—”
“And now,” she cut in, “if the city decides it no longer wants to use your platform, can we operate those systems independently?”
There it was. The heart of Part Two.
Jake took a breath.
“You can,” he said. “But not without work. As I’ve said in interviews, there are switching costs. That’s true of any integrated system, whether it’s an email server or a traffic grid. We have escrow provisions—”
“Escrow that can only be accessed under certain extreme conditions,” Reyes said. “Bankruptcy. Breach. Catastrophic failure. Not, say, a future administration deciding they don’t like your company.”
Jake’s jaw ticked.
“That’s what the city’s legal team wanted,” he said. “They didn’t want to incentivize every new mayor to rip out the guts of their infrastructure for political points.”
A ripple of laughter.
Reyes’ mouth thinned. “We’re not talking about politics,” she said.
*We always are,* Olivia thought.
“I’m not either,” Jake said. “I’m talking about stability. You don’t want your bus routes changing every four years just because someone new wants their name on a contract.”
Patel, a younger council member who’d come up through tenant organizing, leaned forward.
“Mr. Morrison,” she said. “You’ve said publicly that you would rather see your code ‘burned’ than used to exacerbate inequality. Is that accurate?”
He winced. “That’s… a colorful paraphrase,” he said.
Olivia smirked. He’d walked right into her lede.
“But yes,” he continued. “If I believed TerraNova was being used in ways that hurt the communities we say we serve, I would do whatever was in my power to stop that. Including ending contracts.”
“And if that meant taking down half the city’s systems with you?” Patel asked sharply.
He paused.
“No,” he said. “That’s why we built redundancy. Why we have contingency plans. Why we… escrow code.”
“Code that, as Councilwoman Reyes pointed out, the city can’t touch unless you fail catastrophically,” Patel said.
“Or unless you breach the contract,” Reyes added. “Which you’ve made very clear in your own stock filings you have no intention of doing.”
Max shifted behind Jake, clearly resisting the urge to jump in.
Jake’s gaze flicked briefly to the gallery. Landed on Olivia.
She kept her face neutral. Pen ready.
He looked back at Reyes.
“You’re right,” he said. “I have no intention of breaching. I intend to… keep building.”
“So what you’re asking us to do,” Reyes said, “is trust not only that you’ll continue to be a ‘good actor,’ but that whoever comes after you—on your board, in your leadership, in ownership—will also be.”
“Yes,” he said simply.
A murmur.
“That’s a lot of trust, Mr. Morrison,” Reyes said.
“It is,” he said. “And you shouldn’t give it lightly.”
Heads swiveled. That wasn’t in the script.
“So why should we?” Reyes asked.
He leaned forward.
“Because the alternative isn’t some neutral, benevolent public system,” he said. “It’s the patchwork you had before. Contractors with no integrated oversight. Agencies that don’t talk to each other. Buses that ran late for twenty years because no one could get the right data to the right person at the right time.”
“And now they can?” Patel challenged.
“More than before,” he said. “Is it perfect? No. Is it better than what we had? Ask the people whose buses have started showing up when they say they will. Ask the super in the Bronx whose work orders actually get processed instead of disappearing into a black hole.”
Olivia scribbled. His voice had an edge now. Not anger yet. Frustration.
O’Donnell, an older councilman known for liking the sound of his own voice, cleared his throat.
“Mr. Morrison,” he drawled. “You’re a… bright young man.”
Olivia’s grip tightened on her pen. *Bright young man* was politician-speak for *upstart with ideas I don’t like.*
“You’ve built quite a… machine,” O’Donnell continued. “And you tell a very compelling story about buses and trash pickups. But let’s be honest. Your company is in this to make money.”
Jake opened his mouth.
O’Donnell held up a hand.
“I’m not saying that’s wrong,” he said. “This is America. We like money. But I think we’d all feel a lot better if we knew that when push comes to shove, you’re not going to choose your shareholders’ bottom line over my constituents’ safety.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Leah muttered two rows behind Olivia.
Jake’s jaw flexed.
“With respect, Councilman,” he said, “that’s not an either/or.”
“It is when, say, a city wants you to implement a costly privacy measure that eats into your profit margin,” O’Donnell said. “Or when they want to walk away from your platform and your board wants you to fight them in court.”
Jake looked at him.
Something in his eyes shifted. A snap, like a string pulled too tight finally letting go.
“Do you know how many times I’ve walked away from contracts?” he asked, voice suddenly sharper. “How many times my board has asked why we said no to a city that wanted face recognition as part of a ‘public safety package’?”
“Mr. Morrison—” Carla started under her breath, but he was in it now.
He turned slightly in his chair, addressing not just O’Donnell but the room.
“Do you know how many mayors’ offices I’ve sat in while they told me, *‘If you just give us anonymized location data broken down by neighborhood, we can really target our enforcement’*?” he went on. “Do you know how many times I’ve said, *‘No. That’s not what we built this for’*?”
A low buzz.
“Those aren’t stories that make it into press releases,” he said. “Because I’m not going to name names and pick public fights over things we *didn’t* do. But don’t sit there and tell me I’ve never chosen people over profit when you weren’t in those rooms.”
O’Donnell’s eyebrows shot up.
“We’re not here to impugn your motives, son,” he said, a touch condescending.
“Then maybe don’t,” Jake said, and there it was—that flash of temper. “Because the first ten years of my life after high school were spent choosing between rent and heat. Don’t lecture me about the bottom line like I’m some hedge fund guy who bought a city as a toy.”
The room sucked in a collective breath.
Olivia’s pen flew.
Reyes banged her gavel. “Order,” she said. “Let’s keep this civil.”
Jake drew in a breath, visibly reining himself in.
“Apologies,” he said. “I get… a little protective of the work when people assume it’s all greed and ego.”
“Greed and ego are part of any large enterprise,” Patel said. But there was a flicker of something like respect in her eyes now. “So is… conviction.”
They pressed on. Into technicals. Data retention limits. Community advisory boards.
But that moment hung in the air, crackling.
After three hours, the first session adjourned.
People flooded the aisles. Council aides buzzed. Reporters jostled for the hallway.
Olivia slipped out a side door toward the staff corridor. Quieter. Less camera glare.
She paused near a water fountain, flipping through her notes.
Footsteps approached.
“You get all that?” came a voice behind her, wry.
She turned.
Jake leaned against the wall, tie loosened further, the top button of his shirt undone. There was a faint flush along his cheekbones.
“Enough to get you canceled and canonized in the same paragraph,” she said.
He huffed a laugh, pushed off the wall.
“Carla’s going to kill me,” he said.
“Probably,” Olivia said. “You went a little hard at O’Donnell.”
“He called me ‘son,’” Jake said. “I saw red.”
“I noticed,” she said. “Your vein did a thing.”
He snorted. “You’re supposed to be objective, you know. Not mocking my circulatory system.”
“Objectivity is a myth,” she said. “Ask any freshman J-school prof.”
He smiled, then sobered.
“How bad is it?” he asked. “In your notebook.”
She flipped a page, scanned.
“You came off… human,” she said. “Frustrated. Honest. Maybe a little arrogant.”
“Little?” he said.
“Don’t push it,” she said.
He leaned closer.
“That part about mayors asking for ‘targeted enforcement’?” she said, lowering her voice. “Was that—”
“Off the record, please,” he cut in quickly.
She considered.
“Fine,” she said. “Off.”
He relaxed a fraction.
“It happens more than you think,” he said quietly. “They want to use our models to justify budgets, to move resources away from neighborhoods they’ve already decided to ignore. They want math to launder bad decisions.”
Her stomach knotted.
“So you say no,” she said.
“So far,” he said. “We say no.”
“And when your board stops backing those no’s?” she asked.
He exhaled. “Then we have a different problem.”
She watched his face.
“You looked… good in there,” she said before she could stop herself.
He blinked. “As in…?”
“As in you didn’t let them turn you into a cartoon,” she said. “You pushed back without making it just about you.”
He studied her.
“Is that a professional compliment?” he asked.
“Don’t get excited,” she said. “It’s not going in the piece.”
“Shame,” he murmured.
A door banged open down the hall. Carla’s heels clicked on marble.
“There you are,” she said, exasperation wrapped in politeness. “I’ve got three reporters from national outlets circling like sharks and an op-ed writer from the *Times* who wants a pull quote from you ASAP. And Max is sending me panic gifs about your ‘burn it down’ line.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Jake muttered.
“It was good TV,” Olivia said.
Carla shot her a sharp look. “You got what you came for?”
“More than,” Olivia said.
“Then I’m stealing him back,” Carla said. “Try not to publish while we’re still in the building.”
“No promises,” Olivia said.
Jake’s fingers brushed her forearm as he passed. Barely a graze, easy to chalk up to a crowded hallway.
Her skin tingled anyway.
“See you on the other side,” he murmured.
She watched him go.
A Leah-shaped presence materialized at her elbow.
“You look like you just watched your ex let slip he’s not a robot on public record,” Leah said.
Olivia groaned. “How do you *do* that?”
“Powers of observation,” Leah said. “Also, large ears.”
“You’re impossible,” Olivia muttered.
“Was it just me,” Leah went on, “or did he actually sound like someone who might, in another life, have been one of us?”
“He *is* one of us,” Olivia said before she could stop herself.
Leah’s eyebrows shot up.
“There it is,” she said. “The thesis of your eventual book: *The Billionaire Among Us.*”
“Kill me,” Olivia said.
“Later,” Leah said. “Right now, you have a piece to file that could nudge public opinion just enough to make Councilwoman Reyes grow a backbone about renegotiating those escrow clauses.”
Olivia exhaled.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go make someone sweat.”
***
Her hearing piece came together faster than the others.
Some stories you built like scaffolding, brick by careful brick.
This one poured out like water breaking through a dam.
She wrote about the pageantry. The power imbalance. The way city officials looked more offended by the implication of their own past negligence than by the potential risks of the current system.
She quoted Reyes grilling Hart. Leah’s testimony about “code as law.” A bus driver who talked about glitches in the old system that had left him stranded on the side of the road for hours.
She laced Jake’s temper through it.
> “Don’t lecture me about the bottom line like I’m some hedge fund guy who bought a city as a toy,” he snapped at one point, when Councilman O’Donnell asked if TerraNova would ever choose profit over public good.
She let readers see the calculation in that snap. The risk and the reward.
She closed not on him, but on a woman from Queens who’d taken off work to testify.
> “I don’t care who runs the code,” she said, voice shaking with exhaustion and anger. “I care that when my mom calls 911, the ambulance doesn’t get lost because some system thinks our block doesn’t matter.”
She filed the piece, heart still pounding from the hearing’s adrenaline.
Laura called ten minutes later.
“You’re on a roll,” she said without preamble. “This might be the best one yet.”
“Because he lost his temper?” Olivia asked.
“Because you didn’t let that be the only thing,” Laura said. “You showed the system. You showed how he fits inside it. You made it messy. Readers are going to hate that. Which means editors are going to love it.”
Olivia snorted.
“You okay?” Laura added, voice softening. “Personal-professional boundary-wise?”
Olivia hesitated.
“I’m… walking a line,” she said. “But I can see it.”
“Good,” Laura said. “Because after this runs, you two are going to be on opposite ends of a few more microphones. Don’t confuse the heat with the work.”
“‘Don’t confuse the heat with the work,’” Olivia repeated. “That on a mug?”
“Already ordered,” Laura said drily. “Go home. Sleep. I’m pretty sure you’ve written more copy in the last two weeks than two of our columnists did all quarter.”
***
The piece went up next morning.
Jake read it in his office, coffee forgotten on his desk.
He flinched at seeing his own angry words reflected back at him. He grinned, despite himself, at the description of O’Donnell’s “America, we like money” line.
He lingered on the Queens woman’s quote.
He forwarded the article to Aisha and Samir.
*Aisha*: “Don’t make it just about you,” she wrote back. “She listened.”
*Samir*: “You look hot when you’re mad,” he replied. “10/10 would watch you yell at old white men again.”
Jake rolled his eyes.
His phone buzzed with a name that made his stomach tighten.
*Mom*.
He answered immediately.
“Hola, Ma,” he said.
“You told them,” she said, no preamble. “About the heat. About the bills.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I didn’t name you,” he said. “I talked about… my life.”
“You think we didn’t read it?” she said. “The whole building reads it. ‘Mira, José, that’s our rent,’ they say. ‘That’s our boy.’”
He winced. Pride and discomfort tangled in her voice.
“How do you feel about it?” he asked carefully.
She was quiet for a moment.
“Proud,” she said finally. “Mad at you still. But proud. You tell them where you came from. You don’t pretend you’re always in those fancy places.”
Warmth bloomed in his chest.
“Gracias, Ma,” he murmured.
“And Olivia?” she added, almost too casually.
His heart jerked.
“What about her?” he asked.
“She writes good,” his mother said. “Sharp. Like a little knife.”
He smiled. “She always did.”
“You be careful,” his mother said. “She may cut you open and take your heart out in the paper.”
“Bit late for that,” he said before he could stop himself.
His mother clucked her tongue. “You deserve it,” she said. “For making her cry.”
He didn’t argue.
After he hung up, his phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
No. Not unknown. Recognized now.
*Olivia*:
> You didn’t completely implode in there. > Impressive.
He huffed a laugh.
> High praise.
After a beat, he added:
> Drinks the other night were…
He paused.
Stupid to text what he wanted to. Risky.
He settled on:
> …ill-timed.
Her reply was nearly immediate.
> Understatement of the year.
His chest tightened.
> How’s your uncle? he typed.
> Arm in a cast, milking it for all it’s worth, she replied. > He keeps telling the nurses his “tech billionaire nephew” is going to install him a motorized recliner.
> Nephew?? he wrote, affronted.
> In his defense, you look younger on TV, she said. > Less grumpy.
> Rude, he wrote.
> True, she shot back.
The banter eased something inside him.
Underneath, the almost-kiss on the sidewalk still hummed.
He wanted to bring it up.
He didn’t.
Not yet.
There were more pressing cracks forming.
And one of them, he didn’t know yet, was in his code.
---