Chapter 4 - THE BADGE THAT DISAPPEARED
The badge was gone by the time Victoria requested it.
Grant opened the simulation drawer.
Empty.
He checked the desk.
Nothing.
“You must have moved it,” he said.
I stared at him.
“I left it on the evaluation table.”
“Convenient.”
Cole stepped forward.
“I saw it.”
Grant turned.
Cole shrugged.
“She put it beside the charger.”
Grant looked around.
“No badge.”
Victoria’s expression became colder.
“Who reset the room?”
One of the junior security staff raised his hand.
“Mr. Holloway.”
Silence.
Grant laughed.
“Because that’s my job.”
Victoria watched him.
“For now.”
That phrase landed.
Grant heard it too.
Northstar’s permanent director of corporate security had retired unexpectedly three months earlier.
Grant was acting director.
Everyone knew he wanted the position.
Apparently Victoria had not decided.
Neither had the board.
Now I understood why this assessment mattered to him personally.
He was not only choosing new hires.
He was demonstrating his own leadership.
An unexplained cloned credential inside his training suite was exactly the sort of detail that could make an acting director look less ready for permanent authority.
But something still didn’t fit.
If the badge was only an embarrassing oversight, Grant could have admitted it was an unauthorized training prop.
Instead, he made it disappear.
People hide mistakes.
They erase evidence when the mistake connects to something else.
After lunch, we moved to physical assessment.
Grant changed the schedule.
Originally, the first physical round was defensive positioning.
Instead, he announced:
“Containment drill.”
Cole’s name appeared first.
Then mine.
Cole looked at me.
“This wasn’t the pairing sheet.”
Grant smiled.
“It is now.”
I glanced toward the balcony.
Victoria had stepped away to take a call.
Perfect timing.
Grant gestured toward the mat.
“Twenty-seven seconds.”
“For what?” I asked.
“To avoid being pinned.”
Cole’s eyebrows lifted.
“That’s not a standard assessment.”
Grant ignored him.
Then he looked toward Ava.
“Maybe your daughter can learn what happens when adults overestimate themselves.”
That sentence finally made my pulse jump.
Not because I doubted myself.
Because he had decided to use Ava as an audience for humiliation.
May you like
And that was no longer evaluation.
That was personal.
