I turn back to her.
“You understand what you’re doing?” I ask.
“Yes.”
The answer comes clean, without hesitation or attempt to soften it, and I let a brief pause follow to see if she fills it with anything else.
She does not.
“Say it,” I tell her.
Her gaze sharpens slightly, not defensive, but focused. “Say what.”
“What you’re offering,” I reply. “In terms you don’t get to adjust later.”
The room tightens again, and this time everyone feels it.
She draws a breath, then speaks with the same clarity she has held from the beginning.
“I’m offering myself as collateral against his debt,” she says. “Transferable, functional, accountable to outcome.”
Lorens makes a sharp, disbelieving sound that cuts through the air. “You don’t get to define yourself like that.”
She doesn’t turn toward him.
“I just did.”
Vihl’s grin spreads wider now, unrestrained. “I like her.”
I ignore that and continue watching her, because the more she holds, the more valuable she becomes. Most people show cracks under pressure like this, small tells that give away the limits of their control, but she maintains hers with precision that suggests both training and intent.
“You think you’re worth more than what he owes?” I ask.
“I think I’m more useful than what he tried to pay you with,” she replies.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is if you’re not just collecting,” she says, and the implication beneath that is deliberate.
Vihl glances at me, his expression shifting as he picks up on it. “She’s not guessing.”
“No,” I say. “She isn’t.”
Lorens tries again, desperation threading through his voice now. “You cannot accept this. She is assigned. She is under contract to me.”
I shift my stance slightly, enough to remind him without words that the structure he relies on does not apply here.
“Your contract doesn’t hold in this room,” I say.
“It does,” he insists. “Legally?—”
“I’m not interested in your legal framework,” I cut in. “I’m interested in whether you can pay.”
The silence that follows answers for him more clearly than anything he could say.
I let it settle.
Then I make the decision.
