Justice of the Supreme War God

Chapter 30: The Recipe PART 1

Three weeks had a way of reorganizing things.

The Morrison Accounting Group's name appeared in two industry publications in the same month — once in a profile of firms positioned for significant growth, once in a brief but visible mention in a trade piece about Strong Inc's expanded domestic partnerships. Neither article was large. Both were the kind of small, accumulating signal that people who tracked these things noticed and filed, and the people who tracked these things were exactly the people whose attention Diana had been building toward.

Her phone started ringing differently.

Not in volume — in quality. The calls that came in now had a different weight behind them, the weight of people who were reconsidering a firm they had previously categorized and were finding that the category needed updating. Diana took the calls with her usual efficiency and gave nothing away and scheduled follow-ups with the precision of someone who had been waiting for exactly this frequency and knew exactly what to do with it.

She didn't say anything about it in the villa.

She came home each evening with the same composed, self-contained manner she had brought to every previous evening, moved through the shared spaces with the same deliberate purpose, and directed approximately the same quantity of conversation at Marcus Hayes as she had in the first week, which was functional and minimal and sufficient for the maintenance of an arrangement rather than a relationship.

But the firm was doing well.

And she slept well.

She had been sleeping well for three weeks, which was unusual enough that she had noticed it without identifying the cause, filing it under the general category of things that had improved since the hospital and leaving the specific mechanism unexamined. She woke each morning feeling a quality of rested that she associated with vacations she didn't take and weekends she didn't fully disconnect during.

She assumed it was the reduction in stress.

It was a Tuesday morning, twenty-two days after the hospital, when Diana stood at her vanity for longer than her schedule technically allowed.

She had been applying her morning routine with the automated efficiency of someone who has done a thing so many times it no longer requires conscious attention, and then she had looked up — properly looked, with the direct, unguarded attention of a person suddenly present to their own reflection — and stopped.

Her skin was clear.

Not improved. Not better-than-before. Clear, in the comprehensive, even way that she associated with the decade before stress had started leaving its record on her face. The left cheek — the three spots she had been covering with two extra minutes of foundation every morning for the better part of eight months — was smooth and unmarked and indistinguishable from everything surrounding it.

She looked at this for a long moment.

Then she looked at the small glass jar on her tray — the third batch, or possibly the fourth, she had lost count — with its clean glass and its absence of any label and its persistent, reliable presence on her skincare tray every morning because Claire kept replacing it when it ran low.

She set her foundation brush down.

"Claire," she said, when the head maid appeared in her doorway eleven minutes later with the morning schedule and a fresh set of pressed linens.

"Ma'am."

Diana turned from the vanity. She had the jar in her hand. "You're the best person I have on this staff," she said, with the direct, factual delivery she used for statements she meant completely. "I want you to know that."

Claire blinked. "Ma'am?"

"This —" Diana held up the jar — "has done more for my skin in three weeks than every product Sophie has sourced in two years." She set it down. "Your formulation is exceptional. I don't say that lightly."

Claire stood very still in the doorway with the linens against her chest.

"I'm increasing your salary," Diana said, turning back to the mirror. "Effective this month. I'll have Sophie process the paperwork." She picked up the foundation brush and set it back down, deciding she didn't need it on this side. "I also want you to make more of the paste. A larger batch. I want it available consistently, not just when it runs out."

"Of course," Claire said. "Whatever you need."

"That's all," Diana said.