Chapter 2

A few days later, I walked into Sinclair Group's top-floor offices right on time.

Phil Gilbert met me at the elevator himself and led me straight to a private office with beautiful natural light.

He poured me a cup of coffee, his tone full of trust.

"Fiona, everyone in this business knows your client retention is in a league of its own."

"All of Sinclair's major accounts are yours to bring to life."

I held the coffee cup and settled into work fast.

At lunch, Ned sent me a string of voice messages.

"Fiona, that brain-dead customer service bot went live for real this morning."

"Bianca dumped the entire top-client advisory board chat you built straight into that AI system!"

I raised an eyebrow and kept listening.

"The AI started auto-sending good-morning greetings."

There was a gleeful little tremor in Ned's voice.

"You want to know what it sent Valentine over at Dragonvale Realty?"

"It actually messaged him, Morning, fellow wage slave, time to grind those bricks today, with a little hustling-doggo emoji!"

I nearly spat out my coffee.

Valentine is pushing sixty this year, and he's the biggest stickler for old-school business etiquette there is.

He runs a company with tens of thousands of employees, and nothing makes him bristle like flippant internet meme nonsense.

Back when I sent him morning briefings, I weighed every single word.

"That's not even the end of it!" Ned's next message came right on the heels of the last.

"To hit the traffic-monetization targets Sam handed her, Bianca actually embedded ad links inside that AI program."

"Right under that good-morning line, she tacked on a group-buy discount link!"

"Selling a $1.99 free-shipping toilet brush."

I pressed a hand to my forehead. I honestly couldn't believe Bianca was stupid enough for this.

Ned was so worked up his voice cracked.

"Valentine was in the middle of a bid for a prime piece of land."

"His phone was mirrored straight to the conference room screen, to show off Dragonvale's digital credentials."

"And that hustling-doggo emoji and the toilet-brush link got beamed up nice and clear in front of a dozen-plus executives!"

I could picture exactly how much of a disaster that was.

Valentine was probably ready to kill Bianca on the spot.

"He blew up right then and there, called in on voice to chew someone out."

"And guess what? The AI bot answered the call automatically."

"It said, Dear master, all human agents are currently busy. Press 1 to hear about our latest toilet-brush deals."

I set my phone down, feeling like Ridgetech's days were probably numbered.

Ten minutes later, Ned sent a video.

In it, the boss's office door was wide open.

Sam's face was flushed red as he hurled a stack of documents hard at Bianca, loud enough to hear from the far end of the hallway.

"Look at what you've done!"

"Valentine says Ridgetech is a joke, and he canceled the two-million second-half PR retainer outright!"

Bianca showed not the slightest hint of owning it.

She bent down, picked up the documents, and lifted her chin like she had every right to.

"Mr. Dickerson, an old dinosaur who doesn't even understand the smart internet isn't worth keeping at all!"

She managed to sound even more wronged than Sam.

"Not only can't he keep up with progress, he throws a fit over one little meme. His emotions are completely unstable."

"This is exactly the moment for our company to ride this digital transformation and filter out garbage clients like him!"

The video cut off right there.

Ned sent a helpless little emoji.

"Fiona, Sam actually bought her whole spiel."

"Not only did he not fire her, he decided the growing pains are unavoidable and told her to keep optimizing the algorithm!"

I let out a cold laugh and wrote back to Ned.

"Don't rush. This is only the beginning."

"You've got quite a show ahead of you."