“A delivery?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Just have them check it and report back immediately. And tell them to lock down the inventory logs.”

“On it,” Priya said, and the line went dead.

I set the phone on the desk between us.

The silence in the office felt heavy, punctuated only by the distant hum of the building’s air conditioning.

“Is that Mother?” Derek asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But we can’t afford to make assumptions.”

I looked at my brother, taking in his pressed shirt and his expensive leather shoes.

He looked like he belonged in a corporate boardroom on Sand Hill Road, not in a dusty warehouse or a muddy construction site.

“If you want to work here,” I said, “the rules are absolute.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“You will not have an office,” I said. “You will not have a desk in this building.”

Derek did not blink. “Where do I go?”

“You start tomorrow morning at five o’clock at our test site in the Central Valley,” I said.

He nodded slowly. “Doing what?”