The meeting had already slipped past salvage and was now actively tearing itself apart.
Miller's voice had lost its earlier polish, the edges sharpened into something blunt and dangerous as he leaned forward with both hands flat on the table, knuckles whitening just enough to show the strain he wasn't bothering to hide.
"If your people can't guarantee me weapons, Mayor Farren, then I don't have a private-sector partner, I have a liability," he said, each word landing heavy, deliberate. "And I don't negotiate with liabilities, I regulate them."
Farren didn't lean back, didn't retreat, but there was a tightening in his jaw that hadn't been there ten minutes ago as he held Miller's gaze without blinking. "You're not regulating anything I build, mr. president, not without consequences you're not factoring into your equation."
"Try me," Miller said, almost conversational, which somehow made it worse. "Because I promise you, sanctions are the least creative option on my desk right now."
Austin stood where he was supposed to stand, two steps off the wall behind Farren's chair, hands clasped behind his back, eyes forward, invisible by design.
And it was killing him.
This is fixable,
he thought, watching the lines harden between them, feeling the shape of the solution sitting fully formed in his head like something physical pressing against the inside of his skull.
This is actually fixable and they're about to burn it anyway.
He shifted his weight slightly, the movement small enough to pass for nothing, but the discomfort didn't ease because it wasn't physical.
It was the job.
He ran through the constraints again, not because he didn't know them but because his brain insisted on checking the walls of the box one more time anyway. There was no clean way to pull Farren aside in this room without making it obvious, and obvious meant political, and political meant dead on arrival.
Even if he could, Farren wasn't the kind of man who took input from his security detail on billion-dollar negotiations, not because he was arrogant but because that simply wasn't the hierarchy they operated in.
Wrong lane,
Austin thought, not bitter exactly but not far off it either.
And I don't get to change lanes just because I see the crash coming.
Across the table, President Miller straightened slightly, the movement controlled, measured, the posture of a man deciding which lever to pull next. "Let me be very clear about something," he said, quieter now, which pulled the room tighter around him. "If this program leaks in its current form, I will make your company the example that ensures it never happens again, because if i can't rely on you to pledge allegiance to your own country that means you could go to the enemy. And that's terrorism my friend."
"So, this is how you're planning on playing it if i refuse your deal. Quite the shrewd merchant you are." Alex said in a tone that suggested he was already thinking about dealing with the fallout of walking out of the oval office without a deal.
Austin felt the tension in the room shift, not upward but inward, like something compressing.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement.
The secretary.
She wasn't supposed to matter, just another presence at the edge of power, but he'd noticed her earlier and now he noticed her again, her gaze flicking toward him for a fraction of a second before returning to the table.
He almost smiled despite himself.
Really? Now?
he thought, the absurdity of it cutting through the pressure just enough to be welcome.
Of all the rooms, all the timing.
It wasn't like he was unused to attention, but there was something oddly grounding about it here, in a room where everything else was spiraling into something ugly and irreversible.
He let it go, refocused, and the tension snapped back into place.
Miller was speaking again, and this time there was no mistaking the direction. "You want my backing, you want my protection, then you give me control," he said. "Full oversight, full access, and final authority on deployment."
Farren shook his head once, sharp. "That's not a partnership. That's nationalization with better branding."
"It's accountability," Miller corrected.
"It's a veto," Farren shot back.
"It's security."
"It's interference."
The word hung there, heavier than it should have been.
Austin felt it then, the moment the conversation crossed the line from tense to unrecoverable, and something in him made the decision before the rest of him could catch up.
He stepped forward.
"Sir," he said, the single word cutting cleanly through the room, and every head turned.
There was a beat, not long but long enough to matter, as the reality of what he'd just done settled into the space.
You're doing this,
he thought, not regret, just acknowledgment.
All the way, then.