Justice of the Supreme War God

Chapter 25: Iron Hands PART 2

"That company does not take meetings with people like you," Liam said. "They don't take cold calls, they don't take referrals, and they certainly don't take —" he gestured at Marcus with the same dismissive sweep his father used, the Steel family's inherited vocabulary of contempt — "whatever this is."

His voice was gathering momentum now, the comfortable momentum of a man back on familiar ground. "Look at him, Carter." He turned to Reynolds with a spreading smile.

"Look at this man. Look at his suit. Look at — just look at him." He spread his hands as though the visual evidence was its own complete argument. "Does this look like a person with a direct line to Iron Hands International? Does this look like a person with any line to anything above a basic income bracket?"

One of the Steel Holdings attorneys turned away to hide something that might have been a smile.

Reynolds looked at Marcus.

And Marcus watched Reynolds look at him — watched the rep's eyes do the same thing everyone's eyes did, the same involuntary assessment that his appearance had been generating since the day he arrived at the Morrison villa, and he watched doubt arrive in Reynolds's expression the way doubt always arrived when Liam Steel's voice and the evidence of a worn gray suit combined forces.

Reynolds picked up the pen again.

Slowly. Not committing. But picking it up.

Liam's smile widened.

"Carter." Liam's voice dropped to the warm, conspiratorial register of a man wrapping up a transaction. "You've met this man twice in unusual circumstances and both times he's shown up to disrupt a deal that had nothing to do with him. He walked into a hospital lobby this morning and he walked into your building this afternoon and he's standing here making promises that a man in his position —" he let that phrase do its work — "cannot possibly keep." He leaned forward slightly. "You know who the Steels are. You know our track record. You know what we can deliver and what we have delivered." Another smile. "Don't let a very confused man in a bad suit cost you a signed contract."

Reynolds looked at the contract.

He looked at Marcus.

The pen was in his hand.

Liam settled back in his chair with the satisfied stillness of a man watching a foregone conclusion approach its conclusion.

Marcus looked at the room for a moment — at Reynolds's doubtful expression, at Liam's spreading smile, at the Steel Holdings attorneys with their folders and their certainty — and the corners of his mouth moved.

Not a performance. Not a response to Liam's monologue. Just the small, private expression of a man who has been in rooms where people underestimated him for long enough that it has become, in its own way, a predictable comfort.

He reached into his jacket pocket and took out his phone.

Liam looked at the phone.

Then he looked at Marcus.

Then he looked at the phone again, with the particular expression of a man who has been presented with something that conflicts so fundamentally with his understanding of reality that his brain is still negotiating the terms of acceptance.

"Is that —" He stopped. Started again. "Are you about to call the CEO of Iron Hands International?" The laugh that followed was immediate and genuine — not performed contempt but actual, involuntary amusement, the kind that arrives when something strikes a person as too absurd to require a measured response. "That's what's happening right now? You're going to call them? From your phone? In this room?"

"Text, actually," Marcus said.

Liam stared at him.

"I'm going to text him," Marcus said, with the same factual calm he used for everything, as though the distinction between calling and texting the CEO of one of the most inaccessible corporations in the world was the most unremarkable clarification in the room.

Liam's laugh came back, harder this time.