Page 49 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

Sara’s eyes narrow.

“Apparently, the onboarding process came with prior familiarity,” he says, far too casually.

I look at him.

He smiles into his coffee like a man with no instinct for self-preservation.

Sara, to her credit, takes exactly one second to understand the implication. “Ethan.”

“There's no issue,” I say.

Jeffrey leans back. “That wasn’t the sentence you said on the phone.”

“I said it was a variable.”

“You said it wasn't ideal,” he corrects.

Sara’s expression shifts, becoming dangerously close to amusement. “You hired someone you slept with?”

Jeffrey lifts a hand. “Met on a plane, apparently. Which, if we’re being honest, is a remarkable level of convenience.”

I set the tablet down. “If either of you is under the impression this conversation is useful, I’d encourage immediate reevaluation.”

Sara folds her arms. “Does Oliver like her?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t care,” she says. “Though I reserve the right to judge you privately for the administrative headache.”

Jeffrey grins. “See? Sensible.”

I look at him. “Why are you here?”

He gestures toward the folder in front of him. “Because unlike everyone else in this building, I occasionally bring value.”

He slides the papers across the desk.

I open them.

System architecture notes, revised model outputs, preliminary integration issues with the gala demo. Nothing catastrophic yet, but enough inconsistency to irritate me.

I skim two pages before stopping on a flagged section. “Who signed off on this patch?”

Jeffrey sobers immediately. “Not me.”

“Sara?”

She checks her tablet. “Development did the revision in-house. It was meant to be a temporary correction.”

“It’s unstable.”

“That’s why it’s flagged.”

I read the code note again, my focus narrowing. The solution is inelegant. Effective in the short term, perhaps, but inelegant. It introduces drift where there should be none.

A small thing.

Still…