Signora Valcetti came back on a Tuesday, and this time she didn't look like she was writing an obituary.
She looked confused.
Katarina sat on the same rug in the same corner of Seris's study with a different set of blocks, because she'd outgrown the first set, and watched Valcetti page through the books looking skeptical and, increasingly, a little impressed.
"... Your wine export margins have recovered," Valcetti said.
"We renegotiated with Brevaine," Seris said. She was sitting behind the desk with her ankles crossed, wine glass in hand, looking for all the world like a woman who had always known exactly what she was doing.
[You did not know what you were doing. I PUT the Brevaine contract on your desk with the penalty clause circled in what I told you was a "pretty drawing."]
That had been month two of Katarina's shadow consulting operation.
Month one was the Torvano grapes. Seris had investigated the contract after Katarina's dinner table question, found the spoilage rates, and terminated the agreement within a week. She'd switched to a local grower whose product was cheaper and didn't rot. The savings alone had shaved four percent off their monthly expenses.
Month two was the Brevaine contract. Katarina had climbed onto Seris's desk while she was reading, picked up the contract, and drawn a circle around the penalty clause in red ink. "Pretty!" she'd said. Seris had stared at the clause for a very long time before saying one word that Katarina hadn't heard her say too often.
"Motherfucker!"
Kat couldn't help herself.
"What's that mean, Mother?" She asked cutely.
"Nothing, piccola. Don't repeat that."
Anyway, the renegotiation was completed within two weeks.
Month three was the Coretti warehouse. Katarina had spent an entire afternoon "playing shop" at Seris's desk, lining up contract folders by size. Biggest on top, smallest on the bottom. Then she'd pointed at the biggest one, which happened to be the Coretti markup schedule, and said:
"Mother, this one's really heavy. Is it important?"
Seris had picked it up, read it, and gone very quiet.
The Coretti markup was renegotiated by the end of the month.
Month four was Fausta's turn, and oh god how Kat had been looking forward to this.
Katarina hadn't even needed to do much for that one. Seris had started actually walking the grounds after the Brevaine wake-up call, and it turns out that when you pay attention to your own estate, you notice that your gardener hasn't gardened in three years!
As much as Kat wished she'd been the one to lay down the hammer, Seris had instead and Fausta was reassigned to the vineyard, where she could at least carry baskets. (Though Katarina doubted she could even do that much, but oh well)
Donia was let go with a severance that Katarina thought was too generous but couldn't argue with because she was five.
Enza was still employed. Seris had given her the title of "household coordinator" and a list of actual duties, which was not an ideal solution, but it was better than paying a woman to haunt the east wing.
All of this Seris believed she had figured out on her own, which was part of the goal, but it had a disturbing side effect.
Seris was unbearably smug these days.
[Seris Montecardi, my birth mother with the body and mind of a stripper in a place where strippers own land, apparently. But give her a reason to look at a problem and she'll solve it. The issue was never her intelligence. It was attention.]
Valcetti turned another page. Then another. She went through the whole book without speaking, and when she closed it, she looked at Seris the way auditors look at numbers that don't match what they expected, and what she'd expected was a corpse.
"This is a significant improvement, Signora Montecardi."
"Yes," Seris said, examining her nails. "It is."
Kat rolled her eyes.
[Oh, God.]
"I'll be honest. I expected to be filing for a formal review today."
"I can see why you might have." Seris took a sip of wine. "But we've been quite busy."
[She is going to be INSUFFERABLE after this.]
That said... Seris had said "we."
Not "I." We.
Katarina liked that more than she should have.
Valcetti made a note on her form. Katarina couldn't read it from the rug, but the Ledger could.
Assessor's note: "Unexpected course correction. Recommend continued provisional status with standard review in twelve months."
[Twelve months. We bought ourselves a full year!]
The port tariff was safe. The license was intact.
Nobody was getting formally reviewed.
Katarina placed a block on top of her tower and did not react, because she was five and five-year-olds didn't care about trade assessments. But something warm and tight in her chest loosened for the first time in months.
---
The wine came out before Valcetti's carriage had cleared the estate gates.
Not the regular wine, either, no, Seris went into the cellar and came back with a bottle that had dust on it, which in this household meant it was either very old or had been knocked behind a shelf and forgotten about. Given this family's inventory management, both were equally likely.
"To us!" Brynn said, raising her glass so hard the wine sloshed.
"To the Montecardi name," Seris said, and clinked.
They drank. Brynn finished her glass in one go and poured another. Seris was already on her second by the time Katarina had processed the toast.
[We passed a basic audit by the skin of our teeth and they're celebrating like we just went public. This family's bar for success is underground.]
Brynn scooped Katarina off the floor and spun her around, and Katarina's legs went out sideways and the room blurred and she made a sound that was supposed to be a protest but came out closer to a laugh.
"We did it, dumpling!"
[You didn't do anything! I did everything! You were doing push-ups the entire time!]
"You did it," Katarina said, because again, she was five and five-year-olds said things like that.
Brynn's whole face cracked open. She crushed Katarina against her chest and squeezed, and for a few seconds Katarina let herself stay there. Brynn was warm and solid and smelled like the training yard and the stew she'd helped Ottavia make for dinner, and the arms around Katarina were so big and so sure that for one stupid, inconvenient moment, the CEO brain went quiet.
Vivienne Ross had never been held like this, not once, not by anyone.
Katarina squirmed free and landed on her feet. She stood in the middle of the room, looked up at her two mothers, both of whom were pink-cheeked and grinning, and thought:
[We're stable. But stable isn't growing. Stable is just dying slowly. I need to know exactly where we stand. Everything. Ugh, I wish there was a way to view our full status.]
The Ledger answered.
Not the usual flicker of gilded text at the edge of her vision. This was bigger. A full display opened in front of her, translucent jade panels arranged in columns, more information than the Ledger had ever shown her at once.
[THE SOVEREIGN LEDGER]
Signora-Designate: Katarina Montecardi
Sovereign Qi: 0/???
[Attributes]
Analysis: 9/10
Negotiation: 8/10
Leadership: 7/10
Intimidation: 2/10 (Age penalty)
Charm: 3/10 (Age penalty)
Physical Ability: 1/10 (Age penalty)
[Traits]
Photographic Memory — Perfect recall of all observed information.
CEO Brain — Automatically identifies inefficiencies, power structures, and leverage in any system.
[Skills]
Room Reading — Assess emotional state, motivations, and honesty of anyone in conversation range.
Strategic Patience — Plant information and wait for others to act on it.
Vendor Assessment — Instantly identify unfavorable contract terms, markup discrepancies, and spoilage irregularities.
Breath Control — Abnormally efficient qi intake.
Toddler Camouflage — Disguise high-level analysis as innocent child behavior. Current cover: Holding.
[House Montecardi]
License: Provisional | Deadline: ~12 months
Revenue: D-
Trade Routes: 0
Alliances: 0
Reputation: F
Active Liabilities: 2
[Holdings]
Montecardi Estate — D
Vellasera Port — D
Vineyards — D
Iron Mine — D
[Contracts]
Brevaine Supply — C (Renegotiated)
Coretti Warehouse — C (Renegotiated)
Port Tariff Arrangement — D
Torvano Grape Supply — ~~F~~ (Terminated)
Vineyard Distribution (Port) — B
[Personnel — 12 Staff]
Seris Montecardi — Head of House
Negotiation: 2/10 | Administration: 3/10 | Charm: 9/10 Loyalty: Family
Brynn Montecardi — Co-Head of House
Negotiation: 1/10 | Administration: 0/10 | Intimidation: 9/10 Loyalty: Family
Dalla Orenzi — Bookkeeper
Competence: 4/10 | Reliability: 7/10 | Loyalty: 8/10
Ottavia — Cook
Competence: 6/10 | Reliability: 8/10 | Loyalty: 9/10
Fausta Morani — Vineyard Laborer (Reassigned)
Competence: 3/10 | Reliability: 2/10 | Loyalty: 2/10
Enza — Household Coordinator
Competence: ?/10 | Reliability: ?/10 | Loyalty: ?/10
Stablehands (x2) — Unassessed
Remaining Staff (x4) — Unassessed
Katarina stared at the display. There was a lot to process.
[Physical Ability: ONE? I've been training with Brynn for over a year!]
She scrolled down to the House overview and her mood dropped harder.
[Revenue: D-. We clawed our way up to a D-minus. I'd celebrate, but that's like celebrating because your house is no longer actively on fire. The foundation is still charred. Hm... Zero trade routes, zero alliances, and everybody still thinks we're a joke. But we're a D-minus joke now, which I'm guessing is more than we were six months ago.]
The contracts looked better, at least.
She closed the display. The jade panels faded and the room came back into focus.
Her mothers were on their second bottle. Maybe their third. Brynn had pulled Seris onto her lap and Seris was laughing with her head tipped back and her wine glass dangling from two fingers.
Honestly, the circumstances made Katarina want to drop the entire act.
"Um, what does 'reinvestment' mean?" Katarina asked.
Neither of them looked at her. Instead, they stayed nose-to-nose.
"Brynn, stop, she's right there—"
"She's five, she doesn't know what we're doing."
[I know EXACTLY what you're doing and I am trying to CONDUCT BUSINESS.]
Seris kissed Brynn, and it was not a quick peck. It was the kind of kiss that had a trajectory, a destination, and absolutely no interest in Katarina's reinvestment plan.
Brynn's hand slid down Seris's back.
Seris moaned into Brynn's mouth, loud enough that Katarina wanted the last five seconds stricken from her memory.
[... I am trying to save this family and my mothers are in heat.]
She turned around, walked out of the room, and put herself to bed.
The sounds started about ten minutes later. The walls in this estate were not thick enough. They had never been thick enough. Katarina pulled a pillow over her head and pressed it against both ears.
It didn't help.
[MEMO. To: Both of my mothers. From: Your firstborn daughter and chief financial strategist. Re: Workplace professionalism. It has come to my attention that certain members of this household have been engaging in recreational activities during business hours. While I appreciate the value of employee morale, I must insist that all non-work-related physical contact be confined to AFTER the quarterly reinvestment strategy has been reviewed and approved. Failure to comply will result in a formal written warning.]
From down the hall, Seris said Brynn's name loud enough to rattle the windows.
[ADDENDUM: Soundproofing the master bedroom is now Priority One for next quarter's capital expenditure budget.]
She pulled the pillow tighter and started mentally drafting a vineyard optimization plan.
It was going to be a long night.
---
{Stellara}
The Brevaine district sat forty miles up the coast, where the canyon cliffs gave way to rolling green hills and the estates got bigger the higher you climbed.
Stellara Brevaine was on her terrace when her secretary brought the report.
She read it twice.
"Provisional status extended," she said. "Twelve-month review."
Her secretary said nothing, which was the correct response.
The Montecardi review had been a formality. Everyone in the district knew the house was circling the drain. Stellara had been watching it happen for two years with the patience of a woman who had already drafted the bid for the port tariff rights, already scouted the infrastructure, already calculated the margins.
When the Montecardi lost their license, those rights would go to auction, and Stellara would acquire them at a price that would make her competitors choke.
And now the report said "unexpected course correction."
She set her wine glass down.
"Who renegotiated their contracts?"
"The Signora, apparently. Seris Montecardi."
Stellara frowned.
She knew about the Brevaine renegotiation firsthand, because it was her house's contract. The new terms were fair, which was the problem. The old terms had been bleeding the Montecardi dry, and Seris had apparently woken up one morning and decided to fix that.
Stellara had met Seris twice. Once at a trade summit where the woman had spent more time flirting with her own wife than networking, and once at a regional guild event where she'd charmed half the room and failed to close a single deal.
Seris Montecardi was painfully beautiful, surprisingly pleasant, but about as financially sophisticated as a desert crab.
And now she'd renegotiated three contracts, cut dead weight from her workforce, and stabilized a house that had been hemorrhaging money for half a decade?
Something didn't add up.
Stellara had been running a merchant house since before Seris Montecardi had married into one, and every instinct she had was telling her that Seris hadn't done this alone.
"Keep watching them," Stellara said. "I want... quarterly updates."
Her secretary nodded and left.
Stellara picked up her wine and looked out at the harbor. She'd been so certain the Montecardi house was finished. Certainty was expensive when it turned out to be wrong.
She was going to find out who was actually running that house.