(4 days before the switch)
Location: Outskirts of San Francisco, California, world of Earth.
Vivian was stunned. Was this another strategic play? Was he really trying to reciprocate? To connect? Realizing she hadn't responded to his question, she nodded.
"Okay," he took a deep breath. "I guess this is that time where the character shares his backstory?" Alex said with a slightly bemused expression. "Here it goes."
He shifted in his seat, his gaze dropping to his hands for a fraction of a second before meeting her eyes again. "My family had a manufacturing business, one that was generations old. The textile factory we are currently heading toward. It collapsed, suddenly and inexplicably, when I was young."
Vivian watched him, noting the slight tension in his jaw. The thumps of the SUV's tires over patched pieces of the highway created a low, insulating rhythm around them, making the spacious backseat feel unexpectedly intimate.
"My parents, good people—brilliant people—attributed it to market forces and bad luck," Alex continued. "I knew something was wrong, and I refused to accept their conclusion. I spent years, even as a child, trying to understand why. I started digging through every piece of information I could find, connecting financial data with supplier relationships, market trends with competitor actions."
Vivian tilted her head, her analytical mind automatically engaging with the puzzle. "You were looking for an anomaly in the data. A pattern of sabotage."
A spark of genuine appreciation lit up Alex's eyes. "Exactly. What I found was a hidden mechanism, a calculated strategy by a hand that exploited a weakness everyone else had missed. Someone wanted the property, and they were perfectly willing to ruin my family to get it."
"I suppose some people would call that paranoia," Alex admitted, a wry smile touching his lips. "It certainly made it difficult to tell my father what I had found. I could tell by then that my parents had moved on. I think my father was almost relieved, in some way. My mother was a chemist, way ahead of her time, and she easily found a new place to do her research. My father was picked up as an executive at a company an old college friend of his owned. He even made sure all of the employees had help finding new jobs—every last one of them. With everyone settled, he had zero incentive to fight back."
Vivian stayed quiet, listening to the steady cadence of his voice. The cityscape outside the tinted windows was giving way to the starker, cubed shapes of the industrial district.
"I was just a teenager by the time the factory was completely shuttered and slated to go up for sale," Alex said, his tone hardening slightly. "To me, walking away felt like surrendering to the people who orchestrated my father's failure. I became obsessed with finding ways to block the acquisition, determined to punish the despicable people who were behind all of it. Through some favors of business partners my father had helped at some point, I managed to get the sale delayed. Still, it was inevitably going to happen."
"Unless the property became a liability," Vivian murmured, her brow furrowing as she worked through the scenario. She looked at Alex, the pieces clicking together. "Textile mills are notoriously dirty. The dyes, the cleaning agents..."
Alex's smile widened, a predatory gleam surfacing. "I found that many old factories were designated as EPA Superfund sites. Soil contamination with heavy metals and solvents is an environmental blight, rendering those properties entirely worthless until they undergo massive remediation."
Vivian blinked in disbelief, the sheer audacity of the move washing over her. "So—as a teenager—you turned in your own family's property to the EPA just to create toxic red tape?"
"Technically, it was an anonymous tip," Alex clarified, his eyes dancing with dark amusement. "A tip that happened to be accompanied by 'newly uncovered historical documents' suggesting the site posed a severe ecological hazard and required extensive cleanup before anyone could use it again."
"You were gaming the federal government while you were in high school? I don't know if that's more tragic or impressive," Vivian said with a hint of deep respect.
Alex chuckled. "I have always been deeply concerned about the environment. Furthermore..." Alex paused, considering if he should say the next part before going for it. "At the risk of sounding arrogant, I was one of those annoying kids who graduated early so I could get started on college."
"And that's where you got the resources to legitimize the EPA investigation," Vivian added, seeing the trap he had laid.
Alex nodded. "I encouraged a professor to launch a very thorough, multi-year soil assessment."
This time, Vivian was truly impressed. She leaned forward slightly, completely engaged. "With the added benefit that commercial developers would run from the liability and cleanup costs. And if they tried to buy it anyway, they were likely tied to whoever made sure the business went under to begin with."
"Yep. I used the toxic designation as bait."
Vivian was officially intrigued by the story. "Did you catch them?"
"Unfortunately, no. However, it did stall the market long enough to create an opportunity where I could buy it myself through an LLC and keep it in the family."
"That is an incredibly long game just to thwart a hostile takeover," Vivian noted.
"I always play the long game." Alex leaned forward slightly, closing the physical distance between them. "That experience taught me that the surface narrative is rarely the full story. It taught me to look deeper, to question every assumption, and to find the hidden levers that control outcomes."
He held her gaze, the playful banter fading into intense sincerity. "It's why I'm so compelled by your investigation, Vivian. The way you approached those unreported fires, the way you thought to interview garbage collectors, the precision with which you identified the 'testing phase'—very few people would have been so thorough. And even less would have seen it as a pattern. You possess this innate ability to see what others miss, to link seemingly unrelated elements from entirely different sources and industries. It's a way of viewing the world that, I suspect, we share."
He offered a small, almost vulnerable smile and continued. "I've built GIG on that principle: understanding the underlying system, no matter how complex, is the key to unlocking true value. In you, I see a similar, powerful intellect at work, driven by a pursuit of knowledge that pushes far beyond conventional boundaries. That, to me, is incredibly compelling. You, Vivian, have tremendous value."
Vivian stared at him, her initial annoyance receding completely as she processed his backstory and the impetus for his winding path. He was articulating a core part of her own identity, a drive she rarely spoke of, let alone found mirrored in another. His words resonated deeply, touching on the very essence of her being—the analytical mind, the relentless pursuit of truth, the ability to connect the seemingly unconnected. It also validated her mental flexibility to accept that impossibilities (like magic) were simply puzzles requiring a solution. It was a newly discovered common ground, a shared intellectual landscape she had completely underestimated.
The puzzle of Alex Greyson had just become, against her better judgment, far more fascinating. As he continued to look into her eyes in hopes that she understood him a little better, her face displayed a faint blush and she quickly turned her attention back to the window.
I can never tell Ben what just went through my mind.
Alex, on the other hand, watched the color rise in her cheeks. While I hate sharing that story with anyone, seeing that reactive blush might have been worth it.