Your Girlfriend Calls Me Daddy-Chapter 53 | The Costume Has Flex-Weave But The Strings Attached Are Steel

Chapter 53: 53 | The Costume Has Flex-Weave But The Strings Attached Are Steel

The message came during third period.

Hargrave’s name on the screen, short text, read it twice to make sure I understood. Costume ready. Come by the lab between third and fourth. Bring nothing, just yourself.

I showed it to nobody. Slid the phone into my pocket and spent the remaining twelve minutes of class pretending to care about Reeves explaining threat assessment protocols while my brain ran the numbers. Hargrave had said five days. It had been two. Either the man worked miracles or someone had made a very specific phone call to make sure the timeline moved faster.

I already knew which one it was.

===

Building E was quieter between periods, most of the fabrication students either in class or at lunch early. The hallway smelled like hot metal and synthetic fiber, the particular combination that meant someone had been running machinery since before first bell. I took the stairs to the second floor and found Hargrave outside his office door, holding a garment bag with both hands like he was carrying something ceremonial.

"Mr. D’Angelo." He held the door open. "Right on time."

His office was the same as before. Cluttered desk, equipment catalogs stacked on every flat surface, a single chair for visitors that had seen better decades. Hargrave set the garment bag on the worktable along the far wall and unzipped it with the specific care of someone who had put considerable effort into what was inside and wanted the reveal to land properly.

I looked at the costume.

It was perfect.

Not good. Not well-made. Perfect, in the way that things are perfect when someone has taken measurements twice and then taken them again and then decided those measurements were still not enough and done it a third time. Black base with flex-weave construction that would move exactly the way I moved, no drag, no restriction. Silver paneling along the sides following the lines of my torso, not decorative but structural. Green at the collar and cuffs, the same green as my left eye, a detail nobody had asked for and someone had included anyway. The Angelo Corporation logo was nowhere visible on the outside, which told me whoever had expedited this understood that I was not here to be a billboard. It was on the inside collar. Small. Silver thread on black.

Just visible enough to count.

"It came in this morning," Hargrave said. He had the expression of a man who found the situation professionally interesting. "The fabrication team logged double shifts. I have the timestamps if you want them."

"When did the order get expedited?"

"Yesterday evening." Hargrave folded his hands on the desk. "I received authorization codes from the Angelo Corporation’s support division directly. Priority manufacturing, materials upgrade at corporate expense. The flex-weave alone would normally add three days to the timeline."

There it was.

I picked up the jacket and turned it over in my hands. The inside lining was smooth, almost cool to the touch, the kind of material that cost more per square meter than most people’s monthly rent. Every stitch was even. The silver paneling had been fused at the seam level, not surface-applied. This was not a rush job. Rush jobs look like rush jobs. This was a rush job with unlimited resources thrown at it until it stopped looking like one.

"Changing room is through there," Hargrave said.

I took the costume.

The changing room was a curtained alcove with a full-length mirror and hooks on both walls. I put on the suit in the right order, the way the construction indicated it should go, and I looked at myself in the mirror when it was done.

My first thought was that whoever had designed this understood something important about optics. I did not look like a student. I did not look like a first-year with eighty-nine ranking points and two days of class under his belt. I looked like someone who had already won something and had dressed appropriately for the occasion.

My second thought was that my father had eyes on me by day two and had already started making moves.

My third thought, honestly, was that I looked incredible and I was going to have a very difficult time being appropriately suspicious about this.

I came back out.

Hargrave looked at the suit, at me, back at the suit. "The fit is good."

"The fit is exact."

"Your measurements were precise."

I let that go. Walked to the full-length mirror mounted beside the worktable and looked at the full picture. The suit sat on my frame the way SPECIMEN made everything sit, like it had been grown there rather than constructed. The green at the collar caught the fluorescent light and matched the left eye in the mirror exactly.

Someone had color-matched to my heterochromia.

My father had people who color-matched to my heterochromia within forty-eight hours of my enrollment.

My phone rang.

I already knew who it was before I checked. Some part of me had known since the garment bag came out, the same part that ran threat assessments in the background even when the surface conversation was about fabric quality. I looked at the screen. V. Angelo.

"I need a minute," I told Hargrave.

He nodded and moved to the far side of the office with the specific tactfulness of someone who worked with powerful families regularly and had learned where the walls were.

I answered.

"Rome." Vito D’Angelo’s voice came through the speaker the way it always did, even in memory, like something issued from behind a conference table. Warm on the surface and several degrees cooler underneath. "I hear you’re settling in well."

"Two days in," I said. "Hard to settle faster than that."

"You were on Channel Seven yesterday morning." A pause. Not uncomfortable. Just space for the information to sit. "Titan’s shoutout reached eight hundred thousand impressions by noon. The agency PR team flagged it."

"The agency PR team."

"Angelo Corporation maintains a media monitoring contract. Standard practice." His voice did not change. It never changed. "I wanted you to know we noticed. The visibility is appropriate. The optics are correct."

I looked at myself in the mirror while my father told me that my life was being tracked by a media monitoring contract.

"Glad the optics are correct," I said.

"The costume should have arrived this morning." He said it the way you say something you already know the answer to, a confirmation rather than a question. "I wanted the support division involved early. Your public performance at the festival will reflect on the corporation. It’s important you look the part."

There it was. Not paternal concern. Not even strategy dressed up as concern. Pure brand management.

"It fits," I said.

"Good." Another pause. "The top five. That’s still the expectation."

"Still understood."

"Your sister has been asking questions about the succession timeline." He delivered this with the same neutral tone he used for everything, which meant it was meant to land and he knew it would land and he had decided to throw it anyway. "I told her to be patient. That you were demonstrating capacity. I’d like to keep telling her that."

Across the office, Hargrave was examining a catalog with focused attention that had nothing to do with the catalog.

"I’ll keep performing," I said.

"See that you do." A beat. Then something shifted at the edge of his voice, slight enough that most people would miss it. "Rome. The Titan contact is valuable. Vanguard is a strategic relationship worth maintaining."

"I know."

"Then maintain it intelligently."

He hung up.